The island loomed out of the teal water exactly as the charts described—too clean, too deliberate.
Hills folded into each other like muscle beneath skin—a predator at rest.
The deck shuddered into his shins as the boat scraped the shallows. He settled his weight at the bow, the silhouette resolved into trees and the thin, pale line of a road. As he stepped onto the dock, the wood flexed; the hull drew a wet, rhythmic suction against the mud. Grit ground between his sandals and the damp planks. The air pressed back against his inhale—brine-heavy and unmoving. Moisture pooled inside his mask, dragging against the fabric until each intake lagged behind the pull of his diaphragm.
Heat pressed in—wrong for November.
Kakashi tightened the strap of his flak jacket, tracking the ridgeline. Light seemed compressed there. Depth collapsed a few meters past the treeline, the forest interior refusing to disperse its own shadows. No wind moved the canopy. Even the gulls circled wider than they should have, as if the island exhaled something they didn't trust. Behind him, sandals hit wood in uneven rhythms.
Naruto kicked his way past, arms locked and cheeks puffed. Sweat stalled instead of evaporating on the netting of his mesh tank top. Sylvie followed, her shoulder dipping under the weight of the summon; the toad's pads snagged against her skin, and she hitched her strap back with a look of quiet irritation at the asymmetry.
The runner, Idate, moved faster, his eyes pinned to specific marks on the ground instead of sweeping the broad horizon. They climbed the short road into Shinreijima in a loose formation, the town waking in slow, sticky layers. Wooden storefronts sat half-open. Paper lanterns swayed with a slow, erratic tilt that didn't align with the dead air—the paper groaned on its hooks with a non-rhythmic creak that set a discordant pace for the morning.
Kakashi's focus snapped to the treeline.
Nothing moved. Then—a blur.
A boy sprinted past from the inland path, sandals barely kissing the dirt. Tongue out, grin wide, something glittering between his fingers. Fukusuke. He flashed the jewel as he passed, and the air displacement from his speed slapped Idate, who rolled back from the impact.
"Too slow!" the runner shouted, his voice a bright mockery before he vanished toward the docks.
Idate spun, dark eyes wide. "How the hell did he get here first?!"
Naruto snorted, driving a fist into Idate's arm. "Guess you gotta get faster!"
The runner's speed hadn't been the only thing. As the blur passed, an itch pulled like scar tissue beneath Kakashi's skin—something under his skin that wouldn't sit right. A chakra signature had trailed the boy, too refined for a civilian, yet muffled into a flat, artificial cleanliness. It felt like scar tissue on the air. The sensation lingered; a metallic hum persisted in Kakashi's inner ear, making the ground tilt half a degree under him even as he replanted his feet. His windpipe resisted the humid volume for several seconds before his equilibrium finally settled back into place.
He let the thought sit, the mismatch between the signature and the runner's identity left open.
"Heads up," Anko said. Her chainmail produced a metallic chatter, the metal conducting the midday heat. She rolled her shoulders, the links leaving faint, red imprints against her collarbone. "Civilian."
The performer sprinted toward them, appearing as though he had been assembled in a hurry and forgotten. His bald crown gleamed with a thin salt crust. One eye was squeezed shut while the other bulged in a frantic, unblinking panic. He clutched a broken lute, the wood splintered and trailing snapped strings.
"M-my instrument—my performance—" He skidded to a stop, collapsing into a bow so deep his forehead churned the loose grit. "Ruined! Sabotaged! Sabotaged before the grand return of Bunbun's Spectacular!"
His rhythm broke into a wheezing stutter. "Ruined... just ruined... the show is gone..."
"Oi—what happened?!" Naruto asked, his orange shorts sticking to his thighs as he dropped into a crouch.
"You were... supposed to help find my dog..." The performer sucked in a wet breath, his cadence breaking into a gasp. "Just... find the dog... first the dog, then the lute..."
"What happened to him?!" Naruto asked, blinking.
"Nothing...!" The man pointed past them with a trembling hand. "He's right there!"
Kakashi shifted toward the movement. The ground depressed visibly beneath the bulk of a massive, wrinkled dog sprawled in the shade. Its deep, thunderous breaths sent small eddies of dust swirling, each exhale vibrating through the porch wood.
Naruto recoiled. "That's a fat dog!"
"Yes, Naruto," Sylvie noted, her voice flat. "That is a big boy."
Kakashi dropped his gaze to the performer. "The dog is here. What is the problem?"
The man sniffed, dragging a brine-stained sleeve across his nose. "But the guy—the spikey-haired menace! He sc-scared off BunBun and then—" He lifted the broken lute like a corpse. "My art! My livelihood! Gone!"
"Who's BunBun?" Naruto asked, scratching his head.
"BunBun is my tanuki..." The man's chest heaved as he tried to restart the performance, but the heat amplified his instability. "Bun... BunBun... the star... of the Spectacular..."
"A tanuki?" Sylvie's brows drew together. "Like... a raccoon dog?"
"Is it Gaara?!" Naruto's eyes widened.
Sylvie stared at him, the fine salt film on her glasses catching the glare. "Naruto. Where are we? What is wrong with your brain?"
"Actually," Kakashi intervened, his voice mild despite the rising moisture behind his mask. "Shukaku is a tanuki. I'm surprised you know the classification, Naruto."
Naruto grinned, wiping his nose with his thumb. "Ninja animals are super important, Kakashi-sensei!"
"Welp," Anko interrupted, her hand snapping against Naruto's back. "Good luck, twerps! We aren't here to play animal rescue."
Kakashi's hand moved before she could walk away. A small puff of smoke signaled Pakkun's arrival. The ninken landed with a thud, his mass sinking into the soft dirt.
Anko turned, smacking Kakashi's shoulder. "I said we aren't—"
"Anko," Kakashi cut her off, his voice flat.
"—helping!" she finished, her jaw tightening. "You've got that same Morino-brand stubbornness Ibiki has. He tried to lecture me about mission priorities, too. You're a tracker, Kakashi, not a judge."
Kakashi let it pass, letting the silence serve as the only answer. His gaze cut down to the dirt road, where the transition from packed path to loose grit showed tracks that didn't match the weight of a small animal.
"Pakkun," Kakashi said, his voice low.
The ninken tested the air once, then twice, his brow furrowing as he moved between the sun-baked road and the shaded soil. "Huh. Boss, I've got three conflicting scent trails heading into the brush, and the residue is... unstable. It feels like a mismatched growth in the air, like a wound that won't close."
Kakashi dropped into a low center of gravity, meeting Pakkun's level. Heat bled through his sandals—surface hot, shade cool. The itch returned—sharper this time. Not the clean signature from before, but a flicker of something reactive.
He held the thought, checking it against what he felt before. If these anomalies were linked, the trail stopped making sense under pressure.
"The race is compromised," Kakashi said, the words dragging on the way out.
Anko's jaw tightened. "You're overreaching. It's a D-rank missing pet."
"The trail's wrong," Kakashi replied.
Anko clicked her tongue and reoriented toward the docks. "Fine. But I'm not cleaning up the mess if he starts his loop again."
Kakashi re-centered over his feet, heart hammering a calculated tempo. Naruto was already talking to the fat dog. Idate had moved ahead, his posture tightening into a scout's low-center gravity, his breathing turning deliberate.
"Find the tanuki," Kakashi directed.
From the treeline to their right, roughly twenty meters deep, wood fractured under a weight it wasn't built for.
No birds scattered; the forest remained in its unnaturally deep silence as the sound came back late, bounced once, then died in the humidity.
Kakashi rolled his weight forward onto the balls of his feet, his hands hovering near his pouch as he tracked the sound's point of origin.