"I don't like this," Temari muttered. The boy who had introduced himself as Suigetsu –'just Suigetsu, sweet cheeks,'- merely gave her a hard stare and a vaguely threateningly toothy smile, with just the right hint of 'unhinged' behind it. She didn't appear impressed in the slightest, although Aiko mentally gave the try 7 out of 10. It was hard to threaten someone who'd lived with Gaara for an extended period of time, she supposed.
"I'm not a fan either," Yamato sighed, keeping an eye on their new friend. Aiko rather suspected that the adults were thinking of him more along the lines of a 'prisoner' than anything, but it hadn't been explicitly stated.
Suigetsu had definitely caught onto the hostility, but he didn't seem frightened or upset by it. Perhaps the right word was 'amused.'
Baki grunted. "I'd join you, but we need to get this one to the medics." He jerked his head at Kankuro, who was woozily doing his best to pay attention and not entirely succeeding. Still, he wasn't in any immediate danger. "If Suigetsu isn't full of it, this is a situation that needs to be addressed."
He was undoubtedly right, and the Konoha nin knew it. Without Suigetsu's cheerful tattle-tailing, they might have thought that what was going on was more Sand's problem than Konoha's. They would have been wrong.
"How do we know we can trust this person?" Temari glared pointedly at the interloper. "He could be loyal to Orochimaru."
"First of all, he's dead," Suigetsu drawled in a tone that implied she was an idiot. He glanced at his jagged, filthy nails casually and made a slight face as if making a note to clean them. "Besides, why would I hold loyalty to that fucker? He basically kidnapped me and performed experiments on me". Suigetsu paused. "And by basically, I mean that he did exactly that thing I just said." The nin visibly dismissed her to take a long drink from the water bottle he had begged off of Yamato.
Temari flushed pink, scowling as she turned her face away.
Kakashi's gaze flickered silently over the assembled nin, assessing the general opinion. He didn't comment on whatever he saw, but his stance shifted as if he'd made a decision. "Yamato, Aiko, we need to go investigate this. Suigetsu-san, thank you for offering to escort us. We'll take you up on that."
Suigetsu rolled his eyes at how obviously unenthusiastic Kakashi was, but didn't comment.
"Baki, would it be possible for you to send the Mist reinforcement team our way when you get back? Of course, we'll understand if the border can't spare them."
It was probably a good thing that Suigetsu had wandered behind the group. Kankuro and Aiko were the only ones angled to see his flinch, and Kankuro almost certainly wasn't paying attention.
Before that, Suigetsu hadn't given any indication to contradict his story that he was a Mist loyalist who had been kidnapped by Orochimaru. He'd left out his specific definition of loyalist and that he'd already defected from the last administration before he had been kidnapped. But his dismay at the implication he might be seeing Mist forces was telling.
She closed her eyes, suspicions confirmed. 'I thought as much. This is the guy that Sasuke was supposed to end up taking with him after he killed Orochimaru.' Aiko was also certain that he'd been talking about the last member of that group. But it just seemed so farcical, so unlikely.
'Then again, it can't really be anyone else that Kabuto is using to infect the people he has kidnapped,' she sighed.
The confirmation that Kabuto was the one in charge of Sound was one that bothered her. Everyone else was taking it in stride, but they didn't know much about Kabuto's character. They didn't even seem to know that he was a former Konoha nin. It was frustrating that she couldn't share her suspicions.
From what she knew of him, Kabuto was a very logical individual, and not one with a strong grudge against Konoha. 'Well, not against it as a whole, anyway,' she allowed. Her memory was a bit fuzzy, but she thought that he had a grudge against Danzo in specific.
But from what Suigetsu had said, Kabuto had completely cracked. They had been correct that they were seeing various low-level missing nin infected with the 'rage' virus (for lack of a better descriptive term), but in the weeks since they had left Konoha, he had turned to raids on border towns in Fire Country.
On one hand, that nicely explained why Tsunade was too busy to send them replacements. On the other, it meant that the Sand alliance forces had been killing Fire Country civilians. That wasn't going to please the Daimyo.
The choice of engaging in the risk of kidnapping across Fire's borders implied that Kabuto was trying to cause a split between Konoha and the Fire Country ruling elite. (or someone else is trying to cause trouble, Aiko insisted mentally, still not sold on the idea that it was Kabuto. Perhaps someone was impersonating him? Then again, why, if Sound was ruled by the strongest nin there?)
As much as the kidnappings still directly concerned the Sand border guards who had to kill the constant irritants, their job was primarily to protect the border. It was obviously frustrating to Temari, who would clearly rather go after the source of the problem than wait for Kabuto to make more low-level kamikaze foot soldiers. But they couldn't quite justify leaving their post, either. That frustration was probably why Kakashi thought it was worth the trouble of asking if the Konoha team could get reinforcements. It would depend on if Mist was amenable, but Aiko rather thought they would be. They didn't seem fond of the climate or long deployment. It had been about a month in Wind country, and no one liked it.
"I'll ask them," Baki allowed. He turned and bodily picked up Kankuro, ignoring his involuntary whimper. Temari gritted her teeth, gave Suigetsu one final glare, and spoke up.
"Wait, Baki-sensei. I think that we should send a representative with them. This isn't just Konoha's problem." She shifted her hands to her hips combatively, as if ready for a long argument.
Baki merely shrugged. "You want to go with them? Fine, then."
"We'll take good care of her," Kakashi drawled, probably knowing that Baki would have to pressure the Mist team to accept the mission if he was worried about one of his students.
He merely grunted, inclining his head at the group. "Be careful, Temari." He fixed Suigetsu with a stern look. "If you're playing us for fools, I will find you."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Suigetsu muttered testily.
The older man gave a little sneer, and then shook his head. "Let's get you to the nice nurse, Kankuro-chan."
Temari and Suigetsu sniggered in unison, and then stopped, appalled. While they exchanged poisonous looks, Kakashi exhaled loudly and tugged a worn map out of his hip pouch. "Suigetsu-san, where exactly did you say this hideout was?"
Aiko drifted over to the other girl's side, assuming they would probably be assigned to stick together. Kakashi didn't seem to like or trust Suigetsu much, so he would probably either watch him personally or assign Yamato to it so he could be on the lookout for a trap. No doubt Temari could take care of herself, but it didn't hurt to be extra careful with their diplomatic cushion.
Even when on the outs with him, her analysis of Kakashi's thoughts seemed to be dead on. Yamato clung to Suigetsu like a burr, who looked a bit put-out at his new accessory.
'Someone should remember to tell Tsunade she was wrong about Rock letting Sound past their borders,' she thought at one point in their long sprint. Apparently Orochimaru had set up an underground hideout in Vegetable that crossed the border from Grass. That acquisition made a bit more sense now. If they were going to be sending large numbers through Grass, it would just be easier to get rid of any border patrol that might put up resistance. No doubt it had also helped to provide a confusing smoke screen to obscure what was really going on by making other villages think Sound had just suddenly gone nuts.
'Not that their current course of action isn't suicidally crazy', she allowed. Aiko just couldn't believe that Kabuto was really running the show. It didn't make sense. Someone had impersonated him. 'Or he could have motivations I'm not aware of,' her treacherous mind pointed out. 'Something could have changed, or I could just be wrong entirely. Don't be so damn cocky.'
There was something undignified about mentally scolding herself, so she dropped that train of thought and concentrated on cataloguing the changing scenery. The scrubland had transformed into a smattering of scraggly deciduous trees capable of surviving the still-dry (by her Konoha-raised standards, anyway) heat. They were a bit droopy, but they were still decently tall trees, so she chose to see them as an improvement.
"That's where we stopped for the night," Suigetsu wheezed, looking a bit strained. Kakashi barely gave the place a glance.
"I know."
"Apparently we're not stopping," the Mist-nin breathed sardonically.
Aiko resisted the urge to snort. They'd only been running for a few hours. Was he really so out of shape?
'Then again, he was kept in a glass containment tube for at least a year,' her conscience pointed out in the interest of fairness. 'It's reasonably likely that his aerobic abilities went downhill.'
She snatched a glance at his form to her left, knowing that her conclusion was logical but having a hard time accepting it nonetheless. His swordsmanship certainly hadn't suffered. He was much better than she was, and she was passable. As if he'd heard the grudging compliment, Suigetsu's head turned to give her another one of his strange, toothy smirks. Aiko managed an awkward half-smile in return before lifting her gaze back forwards, ignoring the amused sound he made.
'He's so weird, though.'
Aiko was now relatively certain that he was flirting with her, possibly because it ticked off Temari. She seemed to think he was an absolute pig and untrustworthy to boot. He seemed to think Temari was a gigantic bitch and got a kick out of provoking her.
'Suigetsu doesn't have great taste,' she snickered at that thought. 'Temari is smoking hot.'
Aiko would never make the counterproductive claim that she was unattractive. By her standards at least, she was pretty damn adorable. (She might be a little over-muscled by civilian standards, she was fair enough to acknowledge). But seventeen-year-old Temari was hot in a way that a fourteen year old just couldn't compare to, not even an early bloomer.
His strange behavior would just have to remain a mystery, because she didn't care enough to ask.
"If we keep at this pace, they'll know we're here within half an hour," Suigetsu wheezed some time later, appearing decidedly wilted.
"Hn." Kakashi stopped the group, gifting the suffering Mist nin with a condescending look. "Ten minute break, then we head out again." With a flash of sunlight off a cloud of conjured leaves, he was gone.
'Probably to scout ahead,' Aiko realized dully. He didn't trust Suigetsu. She didn't feel any worry, however. Kakashi would never lead his team into more danger than they could handle.
Everyone left in that clearing knew the break was for Suigetsu's sake. Temari didn't seem to appreciate it, but Yamato was nonchalant, dropping down onto the yellowed grass bonelessly. Aiko cringed a little at just how terrible their guide looked. That was an unreasonable rate of deterioration in physical condition… unless it was related to his kekkai genkai, she realized. The condition was much less arid than it had been when they'd started running, but the air had nothing on Mist or even Konoha for dampness. He was probably evaporating and too damn stubborn to say a thing after it had become clear that the general attitude of the group was against him.
Aiko unhooked her water pouch and wordlessly tossed it to Suigetsu, not making eye contact.
There was no point in letting his condition deteriorate further. They still needed him.
She could practically feel his prideful glower, but in a moment she heard him gulping it down desperately. She tried not to wince at the thought that she wouldn't have any sanitized water left for her trip back into the desert. If things got desperate, she could burn chakra to produce more. It would just be a bad decision before entering a fight with unknown entities to waste even a little on something so mundane as a drink when she wasn't desperate.
'No point in standing around like a lump.' Aiko imitated Yamato by flopping down into the grass, but she let her legs go akimbo and leaned over into a stretch instead of letting her muscles cool down too much. She almost wished she hadn't, or that she had been wearing real pants instead of stretchy black shorts. The skin exposed between her boots and shorts itched terribly wherever it touched the grass. It was hard not to scowl. 'How can grass even be this dry? This whole place is a tinderbox.'
She glared at Yamato for good measure, irritated that he didn't even seem to notice the roughness that was bothering her. He just looked confused and mildly concussed, which was sort of his default expression when he could be bothered to have one at all.
'What a jerk,' she thought uncharitably, 'with his fancy pants and his regulation turtleneck.' She scrunched up her nose. 'I'm Yamato,' she mocked silently in an artificially high pitch she would struggle to recreate vocally, 'I always do exactly what the handbook tells me to do, like wear the winter uniform in a desert because it was the cool season when I left Konoha. I like pants, long walks on the beach, and kissing Kakashi's butt.'
Kakashi's butt was dangerous mental territory, so she flopped over irritably and pushed herself up into a bridge position, trying to just concentrate on getting a good stretch.
"That wasn't ten minutes," Suigetsu complained from somewhere above her. Aiko startled a little, having not sensed Kakashi return. She flipped upright and rolled her neck, blinking at her serious-looking commander.
"Suigetsu, how many people are usually at this location?"
He shrugged indolently. "Man, I was kept in a cage until those loonies thought they could drug me and point me at Sand. How the hell would I know? I only saw a couple of the science freaks when I left, but I know they wouldn't have released the freak the original virus came from." He gave a low laugh. "You'd know if they had, trust me."
Kakashi relaxed slightly, tenseness leaving his shoulders. "So you wouldn't know anything about any in-fighting? Any information on the vulnerabilities of patient zero?" When Suigetsu shook his head, he sighed and rolled his neck. "Alright then. Let's move out."
Yamato got to his feet, Temari pushed off from the tree she'd been leaning against, and Suigetsu sighed before tossing back Aiko's water pouch. Kakashi's eye narrowed, but he silently waited a few moments for her to re-secure it before starting off again at a punishing pace.
It became violently clear why he had asked Suigetsu about in-fighting. Aiko gagged, reflexively covering her mouth.
She wasn't an especially squeamish person. But what had been done to the pink-haired corpse strung up between two buildings didn't bear thinking about. It might not have been so bad, if she didn't have the observation skills and physiological knowledge to spot that the girl had been conscious the entire time.
'That's point one towards Kabuto being here,' she noted vaguely. 'Not just any medic could keep a person alive through torture like that.'
By the patterns of blood spatter and obvious signs of struggle, the girl had definitely been alive at least until the muscles in her legs were peeled off.
"Death to traitors," Yamato read, voice dry. "It's good to know about their philosophy towards turncoats."
Suigetsu looked decidedly green and suddenly unhappy about being there. "I remember that bitch," he muttered. He gave a mirthless, barking laugh. "Guess she didn't like the change in management much." He shuffled uncomfortably. "Let's just get this over with," he muttered, starting towards one of the two buildings. "Entrance is through there."
"I think I'll go first," Kakashi drawled, giving the teen a warning look about trying to lead them into an unsecured area. It was amazing that he'd thought anyone would allow that. "Yamato and Suigetsu, behind me. Aiko, take up the back."
Temari huffed at being left out as if there was no question that she would follow implicit orders, but obediently fell in behind Yamato, who was close enough to Suigetsu to probably make him nervous. The building above ground appeared perfectly normal—like someone's house in the woods. Suigetsu jerked his head at a wall, but Kakashi didn't need the notice and had already gracefully kicked in the false door.
"Or you could have opened it," Suigetsu muttered resentfully. "But whatever. That's cool too." He silenced when Kakashi turned to level him with a hard stare, cowed despite his bravado.
'As he should be,' Aiko thought with amusement as the group began a long trek down, down, down into dampness on stone steps. 'Kakashi is a much better fighter than Suigetsu. I wouldn't provoke him either.'
"Ho-ly crap."
When she finally got to see where they had emerged, Aiko had to silently agree with Yamato. It was a gigantic laboratory.
The room was also spectacularly creepy. She stifled the grimace that wanted to paint her features—the walls along one side were lined with empty cells, some of which stank of dried blood and other things. There were tables with restraints, large sets of spinning displays of chemicals, skeletons on racks, strange things in jars, and several large glass containers down the center of the area. As they passed, Suigetsu irritably shattered one with a fist, baring his teeth at it.
In another situation, they might have actually killed him for making so much noise. No one cared, however, because the lab was almost deserted. At the sound, the one chakra signature that Aiko detected became agitated, fluttering like a butterfly's wings.
"S-stay back!" a man's voice ordered, sounding surprisingly strong through the stutter. "Just leave me alone, you monsters!"
As their footsteps echoed across the floor, none of them daring to speak, the voice turned to a hopeless sob. "Haven't you people done enough?"
Crumpled on the floor, one of the largest men Aiko had ever seen in her life glared up at them through a shock of red hair and chains when she finally got a peek between Kakashi and Yamato's broad shoulders. Then Yamato shifted, and her sight was obscured again. Nervously, she glanced around the room, feeling anxious even though she couldn't sense another presence. Something just felt wrong.
"You're not with them," the man who could only be Juugo breathed. "A-are you here to help me?"
Pity laced Kakashi's voice when he responded. "We came to kill you, if you're the person who Sound has been using to drug Fire Country civilians and force us to fight them."
The pained gasp was enough answer. Aiko gritted her teeth and took a deep, slow breath through her nostrils as the sound of shifting chains filled the air. But she couldn't sense or smell anything out of the ordinary.
'Not that I necessarily would, with all the blood and chemicals in the air,' she thought darkly. This place was foul.
"Kill me." She startled, wishing she could see over her taller companions. Suddenly she wondered why Kakashi had put her at the back when even Temari had a good four inches on her. "Kill me," Juugo pleaded. "Just make this stop before they come back."
"Before who comes back?" Yamato asked with a kind tone.
It didn't do any good, as the mere thought seemed to send Juugo into tears. "I don't know who they are," he breathed through shudders. Aiko backed up slightly, concentrating on the wide-open room. Something just wasn't right. She didn't know what she was reacting to, but something just wasn't right.
The sound of Kakashi sounding gentler than she'd ever heard, so sweet and low it broke her heart, managed to pierce her unease. "Close your eyes."
Involuntarily Aiko obeyed, wincing a little at the squelching sound that followed and the thud of what was almost certainly a head hitting the ground. Furious with herself for the moment of weakness, she blinked her eyes rapidly and clenched her jaw.
'I've never heard a man beg for death,' her mind whispered. 'What could possibly do that to a person?'
She tabled the thought, refusing to indulge in morbid speculation. 'This place would give anyone nightmares.'
"Well, that's that." Suigetsu clapped his hands, sounding unduly cheerful. "Let's blow this shithole, hmm?" He strode out of the group and headed directly towards a set of cupboards along the ceiling, carelessly pulling things down and letting them fall with a clatter. Temari pursed her lips together until they turned white, watching him while Kakashi burnt up any genetic material so that Sound couldn't salvage any of it.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Suigetsu grunted, finally pulling out a sword. He tugged the rusty, crappy one on his back off lazily and let it fall with a clatter. "I knew they kept you, baby," he crooned to the new sword, stroking it before slipping it carefully into his sheath. Then he flashed Temari with a toothy grin. "Just getting my things back, love."
The Suna kunoichi rolled her eyes, looking disgusted that he'd referred to her so familiarly. Aiko bit at her lip and blinked furiously, fighting the sting in her eyes from the thick smoke of the burning corpse. She'd always hated doing that indoors and having to breathe it in.
"I think that we should destroy this place," Kakashi mused, scanning it in a detached fashion. "We don't know when they're coming back or what they'll be able to salvage, even with Juugo unavailable."
Suigetsu made a rude sound. "That's a nice euphemism, old man. I think the word you're looking for is dead," he taunted. "You wasted a sick kid in his prison cell. Even I've never done that."
Suddenly, Aiko wanted to put a kunai through his brain stem. She resisted the urge, somewhat unnerved by her own fit of temper. She didn't usually resort to violence out of anger.
Kakashi ignored him anyway, striding across the room. "Everyone, out. I'll light it when you're at the top of the stairs."
Aiko furrowed her brow, not liking the idea of letting Kakashi linger in a room full of nasty chemicals when he was about to start a fire. His sense of smell was far stronger than hers. She lingered a little, giving him an uncertain look. Shouldn't someone else do that? Strong smells could actually paralyze a person.
"Go."
She went, trying not to stare too much at Suigetsu's ass directly in front of her. Now wasn't the time. Even if he did wiggle it humorously, as if in an attempt to defuse the tension.
Everyone else had filed out when she felt Kakashi flying up the stairs like a bat out of hell, forcing her to scramble to get clear of the building as it began to leak heavy clouds of colored smoke and a foul, acrid smell. She crumpled her nose and tried not to breathe it in.
"Oh, fuck," Suigetsu said in a small voice.
'Ah,' she realized. 'Looks like I was wrong. That's definitely Kabuto.'
He didn't seem best pleased, a fact she gathered less from his blank expression and more from the way that he immediately leapt at Kakashi with a blazing handful of medical chakra.
"Shishou!" She couldn't help but yelp, moving to intercept Kabuto. But she wasn't fast enough, lunging after Kabuto had passed her.
Luckily, Kakashi was far faster.
"Temari, Aiko, get the other one!"
She blinked, not having noticed the second shinobi in the confusion of Kabuto's appearance.
'It's one of Kabuto's teammates from Konoha,' she realized. 'Either the one who steals chakra, or the man who bends his bones. Is the last one here somewhere too?'
Aiko took a moment to wish Yamato and Kakashi good luck, before flickering in to cover Temari's back. The older girl had whipped open her fan to display all three moons and forced a barrage of cutting wind at the man before flipping it shut and sprinting in to hit him while he was still lifting his arms to protect his face.
And… Suigetsu was running away. "So long, bitches!" he called out merrily.
"Good riddance, trash!" Temari spat.
She didn't have time to be irritated by his cowardice, so Aiko bit her tongue and darted in with a kunai in each hand to slash at their opponent's grasping hands. 'The chakra-thief, I bet,' she concluded. "Temari, don't let him touch you!" Though a bit confused, the older girl leapt back and flung a spray of senbon to keep the man at bay.
"May I assume there's a reason?"
"Unless you can end it in one blow, I think he has one of those special abilities. He's way too eager to touch you." By the tensing in what little was visible of the man's face, Aiko was sure she was right. 'Either that or he's a pervert.'
"So that means weaponry," Temari concluded easily, producing a twin pair of wickedly curved daggers from what appeared to be thin air. "Very well then." She bared her teeth in a mockery of a smile. "Hold still, I'm afraid I'm not skilled enough with these to be gentle if you struggle."
Aiko sniggered, circling around with her own sword drawn as the man pulled out a weapon of his own, a long blade she didn't recognize. Two-on-one was a tactical advantage, but dangerous for them as well, especially since they had so little experience working with each other. Temari seemed to have similar thoughts, swiping in for quick, glancing blows in a war of attrition instead of engaging constantly. Aiko harassed him from behind, keeping him on the move. It was a way to ensure that they would almost certainly wear him down and win, but it was infuriatingly slow.
"It's like he knows all your moves!"
Especially when she heard Yamato's unnerved exclamation. She had to force herself to focus on her own fight, clenching her jaw and making a nasty cut into her opponent's left leg. He was definitely slowing down now, struggling to block the hits from two directions as the girls circled like sharks.
"He's under a genjutsu!" Kakashi grunted. Aiko heard scuffling sounds. "Yamato, your right!"
'Well, that doesn't sound good.' She managed to exchange a glance with Temari, who looked similarly eager to end the fight. The older girl could see the men's fight from her position, and she didn't look terribly relaxed about whatever was happening.
'It's probably out of our league,' Aiko realized, irritated. She was good, but she wasn't nearly as good as Yamato, much less Kakashi. If the boys were struggling against Kabuto, she'd be dead weight, and she didn't think Temari was much better.
The man they had pinned made a desperate break between the two, eyes wild. Temari swooped down like a goddamn hawk and blocked his way. Aiko saw her chance as if in slow motion while he lifted his glittering blade to deflect Temari's leading arm, darting in to hamstring him. He howled and turned, managing only to take his sight off of Temari as she dug one of her blades into his temple and twisted viciously. He dropped like a rock. The Sand kunoichi bent to tug out her weapon, but Aiko's attention was already on the other fight.
She had been right earlier. It wasn't a fight she should interfere in. Kabuto was fast, and resilient. He ducked off even Yamato's hard blows, regenerating as he made his own attacks. It was damn creepy, and she didn't have the sheer hitting power needed to take him down in one hit so he couldn't heal himself.
Nervously, she circled the trio and tried to think of something. She wanted to say that she was certain her team would win, but Kabuto was preternaturally hard to hit with the kind of move that would keep him down. Aiko was certain that a good chidori to the head would to the trick, but that would only work if the fucker would stay still.
"You got anything good for paralysis?" Temari muttered in her ear.
Aiko shook her head, irritated with herself. "Nothing that'll work fast enough or just on him," she muttered lowly. She didn't see a way to poison Kabuto without getting Yamato, who wasn't immune to her blend. That could get him killed if it set in on him before it did on Kabuto.
Of course, she was wrong, but Aiko rather thought she could be forgiven for not coming to the conclusion that Kakashi apparently did. She'd only had the contract for a short time, after all.
"Summoning no jutsu!" Kakashi practically roared, slamming his palm into the ground. An entire pack flooded out of the smoke, leaping and biting to immobilize Kabuto.
Only one had to get teeth in him to slow him down for the others to begin to catch on, weighing him down on his arms and legs, with little Pakkun viciously clamped around an ankle. They couldn't hold him long, of course, but it was long enough for Yamato to clap his hands together and shoot a winding trunk that wrapped around his legs. Then it was all over, with the sound of a thousand shrieking birds and blinding light that hurt her teeth somehow. Aiko blinked and suddenly Kakashi was fist-deep in the smoking crater where Kabuto's chest had been.
That was when the Mist team touched down.
It was a rather grotesque tableau. Aiko almost had to laugh at the look on Kakashi's face—a mixture of mild surprise and guilt, as if he'd been caught with a hand in the cookie jar.
Temari leaned on her fan and fixed them with an unpleasant stare. "What, did you stop for coffee?" The Mist team exchanged a sheepish look.
"Took you long enough," Yamato panted, resting his palms on his thighs. "I think we're done."
"Uchiha Shishui is the only person I've ever known with that kind of hypnosis ability," Kakashi muttered lowly to Yamato as they waited to depart. His kohai grimaced, looking pained.
"Doesn't make much sense, does it?"
He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch, shaking his head shortly in lieu of a reply. Something had been very wrong about that fight with the white-haired medic, but he wasn't willing to share his suspicions with their foreign allies. He had never seen anything other than Sharingan induced hypnosis that could so totally control a human being from a distance and for an extended period of time. There wasn't really a good outcome to that conversation, especially if he was wrong and caused trouble for nothing.
Uchiha Shishui was very much dead. There wasn't even a chance that his corpse had been missed in the confusion of the massacre clean-up, as he had died first days before at Uchiha Itachi's hands. The body had been interred in the family gravesite. He was sure of it.
Obito's eye burnt in his socket, as if in reminder than another Sharingan eye could have developed a similar ability, or could be wielded by an outsider. 'I know, old friend,' he soothed. 'I think I should check on Shishui's eyes first, before I go looking to see if we could have missed an Uchiha somewhere.'
The obvious conclusion was Uchiha Itachi, of course. He was the only rogue that Konoha was aware of.
But Kakashi had worked with the boy in ANBU for an extended period of time, and he knew from what little had been begrudgingly shared with him that the Sharingan eye of a particular user tended to only enhance that shinobi's specialty. He had never seen Itachi perform anything like this.
'I would feel a lot better if I could rule out the eyes I already know of,' he sighed, despite the fact that such a thing would leave him without a clear course of action.
The door to the barracks squealed open, revealing their tiny kunoichi member flipping her hair over a shoulder. He idly noted that it was getting impractically long and seemed to bother her a lot.
'While I'm asking to dig up Shishui, I can also ask Tsunade to look into the oddity of Aiko's claim that she raised Naruto,' he decided. It would be one less thing to worry about, at least. They set off for home at a much faster pace than they'd arrived at, not burdened by genin. The six they'd traveled with were being left to supplement the border, at least for a while longer.
He was torn between wishing he'd had a chance to speak to Aiko in private and relieved that he hadn't had to start an awkward conversation yet. At least he was relatively certain that she would be amenable to an apology now, so he felt much less on edge when she landed just a little too close to him as they barreled through the trees that meant they were close to home. His apprentice had abandoned her veneer of hostility during most of the mission a few days prior, not even trying to hide her concern over such little things as poisonous fumes from a burning laboratory. Honestly, as if he couldn't hold his breath for a few minutes.
'It's adorable when she tries to protect me.' Kakashi let his lips quirk into a smile under his mask. For all that Aiko seemed to have little sense of self-preservation, her heartrate jumped through the roof whenever he did anything mildly dangerous.
He was willing to acknowledge on the basis of her skills and her relative maturity that she was a young adult and not a child anymore, but the girl had years to go until she would be in the right to try stunts like that. At least she generally had the sense to stay back, even when she couldn't resist the urge to hover.
In a strange way, it was kind of nice knowing that someone cared, even if it was so ineffectual. No one had tried to protect him for a long time.
"Home sweet home," Yamato breathed when the great gates finally came into view through the treetops. Aiko gave an undignified grunt, obviously intent on her creature comforts. She hadn't really been trying to hide her longing for a real bed and a hot bath while they had been gone.
Amused despite himself, Kakashi let his lips curl into a smile under his protective mask that kept his thoughts secret. His subordinates were a bit soft, but he liked them anyways.