Two evenings after Pein's jaunt to scenic Konoha, asshole of the universe, Obito walked the streets gingerly and tried not to step on anything particularly foul. It was difficult, crowded as the relatively flat areas were.
Konoha was thoroughly trashed. Madara laughed with a sickening sort of glee in his head and monologued about how the rubble was an improvement over the mountain monument, but Obito felt nothing at all, other than mild interest at the fact that the only discernible remnant was the lower half of the second Hokage's face. (He'd caused nearly this much damage himself, years ago, it would be hypocritical to be offended or depressed). That was one of the less contemptible Hokages, in Obito's personal opinion. They should keep it like that.
'Pein-kun lost his temper,' Tobi observed with an unusual amount of solemnity. Obito valiantly schooled his expression into seriousness. No one was paying him any particular attention, as the citizens seemed to be either wandering shell-shocked or busily performing manual labor, but it just wouldn't be inconspicuous to start giggling at the voices in his head.
'That's never terribly inconspicuous, actually,' Obito mused philosophically. It was lucky that Tobi was a bit of a flake. Otherwise, even Hidan might have noticed that something was happening. 'Not that Hidan is a problem anymore. He's a bit very dead.'
Tobi giggled incoherently.
It wasn't really that funny, Madara projected crossly. They'd lost resources.
The other two had heard that enough in the past few days that they just rolled their eyes and ignored him. That was probably an ironic way to treat a personality that he'd invented as a way of having someone to bounce ideas off of, but in Obito's defense, he'd forgotten how irritating Madara was at the time. 'Where do you think our friend would be?' Obito posited idly, walking a calm circuit around the outer ring of the village.
Security was obviously not up to par in Konoha. Not that it was ever good enough to keep him out, of course, but it was worthwhile to note as a gauge of the state of affairs within the village. They were obviously prioritizing the relocation of civilians and establishing fortifications instead of tripling the patrols, as another kage might have done.
'Find out if she's dead,' Madara pointed out shortly. 'This errand will have been for naught if the bratling got herself killed.'
Tobi sighed, put-out, and settled to sulk quietly. He disapproved of most of Madara's input.
Obito bristled a little, but acknowledged the advice as good. It was easier said than accomplished, however. Any useful information like that would either be in central administration –tallying deaths would have been their first course of action—or through word of mouth. After an event such as this, it wouldn't exactly be suspicious to express worry about a supposed friend, but it was still an extra risk to make himself memorable. He would have to find where the main office was now operating out of, since the tower appeared to be ruined. That wouldn't be easy, but it was the best option.
'You lie to yourself,' Madara pointed out dryly. 'I do not know why you would bother. Infiltration through subtlety would not be an unwise choice under the circumstances. You would just prefer to abuse kamui and avoid having to talk to the degenerates here.'
He somehow avoided retorting that the older man was hardly a social butterfly himself. Madara was infuriatingly correct, however. Obito'd spent so long alone that he had a hard time talking to other people for more than a few minutes at a time. A little begrudgingly, Obito deigned to wander close enough to other human beings to casually entangle himself in conversations. The first three didn't naturally wander near the topic, but eventually he found a man who mentioned that he had been working on clean-up in the financial sector. That sounded like a clue to him. The highest priority points for reconstruction should be residential and what was needed in order to run the bare bones of the village.
Senju Tsunade had issues, but she was not so hilariously incompetent as to attempt to settle her people in banks and offices.
He was right, of course. It would probably be more intelligent to time matters so that he didn't have to cut down every person in the building, instead of walking through the front door in broad daylight. Shinobi often worked long, hard hours, but everyone had to sleep at some point. Obito found himself a seat outside the busiest building and nursed a drink he had received from a relief station. He went through two waters and the worst cup of coffee he'd ever encountered before the mass exodus of chakra signatures from the building indicated that the Hokage had left the building with her ANBU bodyguards. It may not have been to sleep, however, judging by the odd haste they used when exiting her building. He didn't know or care what the problem was, but it was fine by him.
Then he walked right in. Sneaking would have been more enjoyable, but sometimes it was actually less conspicuous to look bored and act as though you had a reason to be someplace.
It was almost uncanny how well the simple technique worked. If he had been the one running the village, now would be the time he was most concerned with security. On the other hand, the Konoha nin were likely running on fumes at best, and their tragic encounter with Pein had been so recent that no country would have been able to both hear a report and send a team of infiltrators out. When you were able to travel instantaneously, your outlook on security and assessing danger changed a fair bit.
'Speaking of which,' Tobi bubbled cheerily, apparently having forgotten his resolution to ignore Madara and Obito, 'Are we going to break Aiko-chan's legs so she doesn't run away again? Because that would make tag much easier.'
'Idiot,' Madara sneered, even as Obito cringed. He did his best to ignore the commentary and search the sealed office that Tsunade had left behind. It wouldn't have been bad security work, in a world without kamui. 'Hiraishin will be the problem, not running. It would be much more sensible to place a seal of loyalty on her. Much like the one on our body.'
Obito scowled, scratching self-consciously at the warped flesh of his cheek, hidden under a smoothing genjutsu.
It seemed like a dirty trick to him, but it would get the job done. That was a last resort, though. He wasn't a seal master or a surgeon. Cutting someone up to tattoo their insides with complicated fuinjutsu seemed like the sort of solution that Madara had happened upon with rather more trial and error than Obito could afford to invest. He didn't really want to kill Aiko, especially not in a stupid accident.
It wasn't like he was actually going to use her as the sacrifice. Probably. Unless he had to raise Madara after all. In a way, he was still doing her a favor, as he had planned when the idea of taking the girl had first occurred. Konoha was a dump. Anyone who reminded him of Rin deserved better than Konoha.
Whatever her administrative faults, however, Senju Tsunade kept a neat (if unforgivably tacky) office. That made it pleasantly easy to rifle through the visibly out-of-place slate gray filing cabinet she had left beside her pale pink-and-white marble-topped desk, once he'd finally managed to get the damn thing open. He had no idea what she'd done—jammed it, perhaps, or placed some security seals he was unfamiliar with on it—but he couldn't get it to budge at all, even after it was unlocked.
Obito ended up painstakingly carving the side off of the now wobbly box with a kunai, leaving metal shavings on the plush purple carpet. It was probably a good thing for his bid at world domination that no one saw him awkwardly forcing his fingers in and pulling papers out through a couple inches of space. Some papers tore and most wrinkled, but he didn't really care. At this point, he'd pretty much given up on covering his tracks: they were going to know someone had been in the office. Speed was now preferable to stealth. A few grabs were enough to figure out the gist of the organizational system—Shinobi were organized by rank and first names, which had been translated into a number code.
'She's not a complete simpleton,' Madara noted begrudgingly. Anyone who didn't know who they were looking for would be completely lost—last names weren't even on the records. That meant that you couldn't go looking, say, for a Hyuuga, if you were out on a nice jaunt of bloodline theft. It also meant that she was very familiar with her people.
Obito snorted. 'The bias of the voices in my head is clear,' he retorted. 'Otherwise, you'd have the sense to acknowledge that the woman regarded as the best medic in modern history can't possibly be slow.'
'You put too much stock in the opinions of others,' Madara muttered rebelliously.
He didn't bother to acknowledge that. 'Her record hasn't been updated,' Obito noted, utterly disgusted. What a waste of time spent digging through that stupid cabinet. It looked like the box had somehow been salvaged from the tower, then, and wasn't recent. Aiko had a file in it, but it wouldn't tell him what he needed now. He took it anyway to read later. It couldn't hurt to have as much information as possible.
Obito took a petty sort of pride in knowing he'd ruined the cabinet when Pein hadn't managed it. He gave the thing a little kick, just to be thorough. Then he sat unceremoniously in what had to be the Hokage's chair, eyes darting around the room.
"What does she see in her day," he mused thoughtfully. "Where does she look? If I were using sensitive information often, I would keep it either nearby or within sight, so I know it's safe."
There was a wall safe on the left side of the room. Optimistically, Obito pried it open by freezing and shattering the lock. He ducked immediately, senses clueing him in before his conscious mind could know anything was wrong.
"A gas trap," he grumbled wryly. Of course the safe was a decoy set to blow a sedative or poison in the face of whoever opened it. "Fucking Senju."
'So now you agree,' Madara pouted. Well. He wouldn't have described it as a pout, but Obito certainly did.
"Oh, shut up," he sighed, waving the last bit of smoke away from his face and giving a quick glare to the very empty safe.
Still not helpful. Damnit.
Next, Obito tried pulling up the redundant and doubtlessly costly rugs, looking for hidden papers or a floor safe. There was nothing but an old bubblegum wrapper. He found a half-empty bottle of wine hidden in a rather pathetic, obviously maltreated fern, but the flora didn't seem to hide any other secrets. There were no hidden bottoms in her drawers, a quick check revealed no genjutsu—there was nothing, as far as he could see. Flummoxed, Obito fell back onto Tsunade's chair to gather his thoughts.
"She's really good," he said wonderingly. None of the usual tricks were panning out. Wherever she was hiding her paper work, it was really… Oh.
'I'm glad no one was here to see that,' he thought a bit morosely, leaning forward to pick up the folder lying abandoned on her desk labeled 'active personnel'. Goddamnit. At the giggle in his head, Obito snapped, "Shut up, Tobi!"
Tobi was becoming more irritating than useful. Maybe it was time to phase him out of use.
With a bit of a pout, Obito scanned the lists inside and their notations as quickly as possible, looking for familiar names. It mostly seemed to be a handwritten list of names and their current whereabouts, probably so that Tsunade could use it as a reference while Konoha was in such disorder. There seemed to be a few pertinent notes on a select few shinobi, which tugged at his curiosity.
"Kurenai?" Obito mused, stopping for a moment. He hadn't thought about her in years. What was she… Oh. He turned the page. Nothing interesting. It must have been in code, because the notations didn't entirely make sense. He didn't care enough to parse through it.
'We do not have an unlimited time for you to reminisce about your painfully dull childhood peers,' Madara sighed.
'Asshole,' Obito scowled. He couldn't quite bring himself to disagree. Although that brief look at Kurenai's file hadn't been completely worthless. Now that he thought about it, there was a strange notation by Kurenai's name that was by quite a few others—a circled X. Probably a random symbol and not actual code, something that Tsunade had picked on the spot. It seemed to be a lazy marking to pick out certain people by whatever criteria she was using, instead of an attempt to hide something from a casual reader. Tsunade had probably just compiled these notes today, actually, in the last six hours or so in an attempt to sort out her manpower.
Actually… He flipped rapidly, comparing pages. It looked like it was by the name of almost everyone who wasn't either out of the village or most recently assigned to watching civilians or genin. Odd. He didn't recognize it—it didn't seem to mean anything, and he didn't see much correlation between the people who had it. Gender, specialization, and age were all widely varied.
'Maybe it just means anyone who fought Pein!' Tobi piped up helpfully.
Madara chuckled at that. 'Yes, Senju Tsunade could be worried about contamination from his general idiocy,' he agreed amiably. 'A fairly perceptive concern.'
Obito tried valiantly not to roll his eyes. 'You both suck.' Since it was clear that the peanut gallery wasn't going to leave him be, he abandoned his curiosity and went back to reading with all haste. Ooo, Bakashi was in Ame, along with Maito Gai and… damnit, it was irritating that he'd missed out on the chance to snatch up a two-for-one deal on Uzumaki twins.
Kakuzu had mentioned that Naruto was there, but it was still a vexation. Ame was a bit out of the way of his current errand. Besides, he didn't know what he'd do with such a high-level bijuu at the moment. He could probably scrape together enough chakra to deal with the four-tails' jinchuuriki, but not the nine-tail. Not now, anyway. Grumpily, he flipped that section entirely, despite seeing that there were more entries posted in that area. He was already certain that Aiko was in the village, or at least that she hadn't been posted to Ame. Kakuzu hadn't noted anyone of her description present. Not that he would necessarily have remembered, of course. If Kakuzu didn't see dollar signs when he looked at a person, they were a non-entity to him.
'She has that same marking as Kurenai-san,' Tobi noted, mildly surprised when Obito finally found Aiko's rather slim file. And no wonder it took so long—everyone who had been confined to the hospital was in the very back of the records.
'That is all? There are suspiciously few hospitalizations, when the amount of damage Pein caused is taken into consideration,' Madara scowled cautiously. 'We are missing information.'
"Well, that'll make her easier to find," Obito noted optimistically.
And it would have, if the hospital hadn't been about sixty percent missing when he traveled there. Obito stared in mild disbelief at jagged walls and wiring spouting sadly out of ruined metal and drywall.
It was one thing for the Hokage monument to be ruined, and for homes to be destroyed. But the hospital? He shook his head. It just seemed… wrong. What kind of jackass attacked a hospital?
Well, Pein would, obviously. But still.
' What now?'
Obito answered his own question before anyone else could. 'A hospital can't be relocated to another building like the Hokage's office was. It's not currently a state of emergency, so they won't be doing triage or working out of a tent. They had to have relocated to a real facility.'
That left precious few options. No one would want to lug patients further than they had to, so they were probably relatively close, for that reason and so that it was possible to stay in easy communication with Konoha. Tanzaku Gai was closest, but he didn't think they had a full-scale hospital. The civilians who lived there made do with a clinic and an old-fashioned folk healer, and traveled to Konoha for their other medical care.
Otafuku Gai it was, then.
~~~
It was the kind of thing he knew he would never be able to forget. No amount of dangerous missions, or banal pranks on his peers to assuage his innate pettiness, or time spent with his nose in a book would make him forget rounding the doorway just in time to see the people inside disappear like a mirage. He wouldn't have seen even that if he had followed protocol instead of slipping in the window of the break room a floor above and coming down the disused stairs to avoid getting spotted by a possessive medic-nin with silly rules about visitation hours. He just meant to check that she was alright and see what was going on, not disturb her.
Kakashi almost thought he was seeing things. They were there, and then they weren't, without any traces of a shunshin or chakra expenditure trail.
Common sense dictated that was not possible.
Except, of course, he knew that it could be done. He personally knew of two techniques that would allow a person to seemingly disappear. He was more than a bit certain that he hadn't accidentally uncovered his eye and used kamui on Aiko and the stranger, so that left Hiraishin.
But that didn't make sense either. There had to be something else. He paced like a caged animal, not caring that he really should be rushing to report to Tsunade. Every breath that he took in that otherwise sterile, unremarkable room filled his nose with a scent that was utterly impossible.
Or at least, it was severely implausible. It did make him re-consider Kamui as a possibility, however.
~~~
"You think we've failed to account for an Uchiha," Tsunade said flatly, eyes hard, when he finally managed to see her for more than the few minutes it took to report.
Kakashi nodded, jaw gritted shut tightly and his teeth grinding just a little bit. It was a bad habit, but he couldn't care at the moment. Besides, the office stunk of cleaning agents. Had that been her big emergency that kept her occupied? Her office was dirty? Because he might snap and commit the shinobi equivalent of regicide if Tsunade's nitpickiness had lost their chance to find that man.
"Do you think Itachi would have more information?" she tried, a bit doubtful herself.
"Yes," Kakashi bit out tersely. He ignored her faint surprise. "He was withholding some sort of information in Ame. At the time I thought it was just about Aiko, but it could very well be relevant."
Sasuke's only living relative or not, if that little punk had endangered one of his teammates through high-handed reticence, there was going to be blood.
Without another word, Tsunade flickered through the handseals for a summoning jutsu so fast that he could barely see movement. Unsurprising. Medics had deft fingers. "Kaysuya-sama, is Sasuke's team in condition to move out?"
The slug queen curled a little on the desk, smearing pink-tinted slime on forgotten financial statements from the office's last owners. There was an usual amount of papers out in the open, now that he thought about it. "I suppose," the slug snuffled delicately. "Wouldn't that short-hand the teams, however?"
"I'll send out replacements," Tsunade assured brusquely. "We have plenty of younger teams in good condition. Maintaining control is much less dangerous than the original assignment. Genin can handle it. Tell Sasuke to return home immediately, with as much haste as possible. He should bring Naruto, Karin, and Itachi with him."
"Alright," Katsuya trilled doubtfully, scrunching up her body. "As you say, hime. Should I advise Itachi-kun to disguise himself?"
While the females discussed logistics of bringing back someone internationally reputed as a criminal, Kakashi stood stock still and wished he could be doing something more productive. Like chasing a scent trail (there was no scent trail, except the one from the nurse's station where medical records had been stolen to Aiko's room) or gathering a team to take action (there was no action to take, as far as he could tell) or strangling Shizune's skinny neck for failing not once but twice to secure a patient under her care.
And Jiraiya, now that he thought about it. What the fuck had the old man been thinking? Why hadn't he been watching his goddaughter? The man himself was slumped against the far wall, staring bleakly into space. He barely seemed to be conscious.
'It would be really satisfying to punch Jiraiya right now,' Kakashi mused dangerously. To hell with the witness. What was Tsunade going to do about it?
His body was taut with tension and directionless fury, but Kakashi managed to master himself. He didn't want to look at either Jiraiya or Shizune right now, so it was a good thing Shizune had the wisdom to slink around elsewhere with her tail between her legs. The logical part of his consciousness knew that they weren't to blame, but his temper disagreed.
'I'm being a hypocrite. I'm blaming them because I feel guilty,' he diagnosed. 'What kind of teammate or authority figure can't protect their charges after the danger is actually over? We failed terribly.'
That hardly made him feel any better.
"Kakashi…" Tsunade started warily. He noticed that Katsuya was gone. That didn't explain the tension in Tsunade's face, however. "Tell me again. What did you say you saw?"
"He was holding Aiko's wrist," Kakashi reiterated impatiently. A full-grown man, standing over a teenaged girl's sickbed and grabbing at her. He couldn't remember it without feeling sick with anger. Probably the same man who'd harassed Aiko before, attacking her in a park at night. "Then they were just gone."
Jiraiya made a small, wounded sound.
"And she didn't…" The Hokage trailed off, looking troubled. "There's a possibility you should know about," she said quietly. "Aiko may have gone willingly."
"What."
It was probably a good thing that she spoke quickly, over the rage bubbling at that idiotic statement.
"Aiko wouldn't have known!" Tsunade denied hastily, brushing a bit of unwashed bang off of her forehead. "That's why she was in the hospital. Physically, she was fine."
Physically, she was fine.
Something rather like horror clawed at his gut at the obvious exclusion there.
Tsunade must have seen something horrible in his expression, but he had no idea what his face was doing at the moment. The Hokage swallowed, and her jaw tensed for just a moment before she continued. "It was brain damage of some sort. We hadn't gotten her to a specialist yet. It was…" She trailed off uneasily. "Did anyone tell you what happened here?" Tsunade settled for unhappily, jerking slightly as if to look at her teammate behind her. Jiraiya could have been carved for stone, for all that he moved.
Brain damage. God.
It was a stupid question with an obvious answer, but he obliged. "Akatsuki," Kakashi summed up emotionlessly. He hadn't stayed within Konoha long enough to actually get a full debriefing, once it became clear that Tsunade didn't exactly have the time to indulge him after he'd explained the situation in Ame. He'd set Yamato and Genma to work with the teams re-building the downtown district and set off to find out what had happened to his other subordinates. He hadn't managed to track down Sai, but he hadn't tried that hard either once he'd been reassured that the boy was uninjured but heard that Aiko was in hospital.
"Yes," Tsunade agreed distastefully. "That's the gist of it, I suppose. You're missing some critical information, however. It's unbelievable, but almost everyone died."
"There are almost no casualties," Kakashi rejected instantly. He'd seen that for himself.
"Because of what that freak did," Tsunade rebuffed, not noticing the other Sannin's tortured expression. She waved a hand tiredly. "I'm sure Jiraiya would give you a much more flowery version, but the leader of Akatsuki possessed a dojutsu that gave him control over life and death. Apparently the Rinnegan is a real thing."
It took a moment to chew that over. "That's crazy."
"And sick, and wrong," Tsunade listed wearily, eyes faraway on something he couldn't see. "A boundary that men were not meant to cross. Yes, I know all that already. He brought it up as a condition of his surrender. At that point, I figured we had nothing left to lose." Her thin shoulders shrugged slightly. "Right or wrong, it worked. Not without repercussions, however."
Of course it hadn't. Nothing in the world came without consequences. It was infantile to hope otherwise.
"Those being?" he asked tightly, not liking where this discussion was going. He could put pieces together. He didn't have to hear it from Tsunade's lips to know that-
"Aiko died."
'Ouch'.
"She didn't come back quite the same. I think that's not uncommon, though we haven't had much time to do a study on it."
Still, it hurt to hear.
"How?" he demanded.
Tsunade looked right at him and blatantly lied, gaze flickering down. "I don't know."
Another person might have been enraged that she wouldn't tell him the truth. Kakashi was just logical enough to read between the lines and realize Tsunade thought it would be better if he didn't know the particulars, probably for his own sake.
"I want to know," Kakashi said quietly. It was probably relevant, wasn't it? And if she'd had to endure it, he could cope with hearing, as penance for failing to protect her if nothing else.
Tsunade looked mildly queasy. "Stubborn." There wasn't any heat in her voice at all. "Her ANBU captain reported it in. Along with Mitarashi, they were fighting one of the Akatsuki. Mitarashi went first."
And Kakashi flinched, despite the fact that he'd seen Anko not six hours ago. He knew she was fine. They weren't even that close, so the sudden desire to ascertain that she was well was an illogical and useless impulse.
"I understand that the fight was not going well," Tsunade summed up carefully. He tried not to wonder what that meant. He would have thought that Anko dying was enough reason to rate the fight as a struggle. But there was no reason for Tsunade to be redundant. "Her captain, Yukimasa-san, seemed to think that Aiko was trying to protect him."
Improbable.
And he instantly felt shamefully guilty for doubting that assessment, carefully avoiding eye contact with Jiraiya, whose dull gaze had wandered over to Kakashi's face. Aiko could be very protective, yes, but generally of people she felt were weaker than her, not authority figures. He'd noted more than once that she demonstrated a worrying tendency to assume that her equals and superiors would be fine and to pay them little attention.
Guilt aside, it seemed much more likely that there had been another motivation. (Unless Anko's death really shook her, of course). Probably her damn temper. She wasn't a shouter like Naruto, but hell if she didn't hold grudges and act impulsively.
"And?" he prodded, because Tsunade didn't seem to be about to continue on her own.
"To be blunt, she killed herself," Tsunade admitted.
That was blunt. He realized that he had stopped breathing, but didn't care quite enough to take action to rectify that cease in motor function.
"Were you… No," Tsunade shook her head, tangling her fingers in her hair. "You wouldn't even know about that, would you? Hell. Where to start?" She glanced up at him, and apparently decided to go for the short version. "In the past year, she accidentally acquired a detonation seal that would fail when her chakra system failed to power it."
That really raised more questions than it answered. Though the pathetically guilty look on Jiraiya's face made him wonder…
"I think that she intended to use that to finish the fight." Uncomfortably, Tsunade stared at the bridge of Kakashi's nose in a way that implied she desperately wanted to look away. "According to Yukimasa-san, nothing the team had come up with managed to damage their opponent. And at that point, it appeared as though there weren't any good options she or Yukimasa were physically capable of attempting."
He really tried not to wonder how bad her condition must have been to dismiss any other possibilities. Aiko was very interested in survival. She wasn't always practical about it, but her failing seemed to more generally be an arrogant belief that she wouldn't be killed than that she didn't care about her own life. And that was a pretty typical teenaged viewpoint, if he were honest.
Jiraiya sighed tiredly. "Maybe she could have escaped with Hiraishin, but I don't think Aiko had it in her to leave Yukimasa to die, and she probably wasn't thinking that clearly. If she thought that the choice was between both of them dying and the explosion killing the Akatsuki after the fact, or saving her captain…" the toad sannin trailed off. There wasn't really a need to finish the thought.
In any case, it just didn't seem like her to think that there were really no options left. It didn't fit, it didn't make sense. Or maybe he just didn't want to believe it.
"I think I've heard enough. So this Akatsuki decided to raise Konoha's dead?" Kakashi interrupted, just to quiet the childish denials in his head.
"Yes. Nagato." At his puzzled look, Tsunade elaborated, "Apparently, Akatsuki's leader was one of Jiraiya's old students."
He should probably pity the older man. Maybe later he would be able to work up some sympathy, once he felt less like slamming Jiraiya's face into a wall repeatedly. And there was such a convenient wall, right there. It would look so much better with a Sannin-shaped hole in it.
"He was really the only Akatsuki present. He used some sort of puppet jutsu with corpses to make it seem like there were six shinobi."
Convoluted and stupid. Besides, he didn't really care at the moment.
"So what you're telling me is that this man's jutsu didn't do a good job of putting Aiko back together," Kakashi summarized impatiently.
Tsunade cringed, just a little bit. "For the most part, it worked," she assured weakly. "She just doesn't seem to remember anything. Or anyone, really. Other than that, she seems fine. Her vocabulary is age-appropriate, and she doesn't show any signs of reduced cognitive function. She's just confused."
How comforting. Jiraiya seemed to think so as well. His eyes were forced shut, but his face certainly wasn't peaceful.
"I picked Nagato's brain for everything he knew about the jutsu, but it was the same as the old stories. The Rinnegan can restore the dead to the state they were meant to be. It sounds nice, but it leaves a lot of questions about how the jutsu decides how to work. It doesn't seem consistent, but it could be that I haven't defined the parameters yet. Some people seem just fine, some are better than they were, and some…"
"Are not fine." That bit was obvious in context, so there was no point in dancing around it. "So an unknown Uchiha kidnapped Aiko for unknown reasons and she doesn't necessarily know anything is wrong."
"I hope you're right about Uchiha Itachi having information we can use," Tsunade said, in lieu of a direct answer. He already knew his summation was right. "As much as we need all our manpower, I would let you take a team to go look, if we had the first idea of what to look for. I'll call you in when Itachi reports so you can see for yourself what he knows. If you're going to be the one out looking for her, it makes sense for you to have the chance to get whatever information you deem necessary."
"Alright." He swallowed, feeling like he was carrying an extra hundred pounds on his back. "Have you told Naruto yet?"
The Hokage looked hunted and guilty.
"We're waiting until they're safely in the village to tell them that," Jiraiya rumbled without opening his eyes. "It's not the kind of thing you say via letter or an intermediate until you have to."
'It's not the kind of news you put off either,' Kakashi retorted internally. But he didn't want to be the one to break that news, so he nodded and left.
~~~
Two days had never seemed to pass so slowly before. Reconstruction had been sped drastically by Tenzou's assistance, but there was still plenty of banal work to be done by relatively strong helpers.
Kakashi found himself nailing thousands of tiles and laying wiring under his kohai's worried brown eyes, whenever Tenzou could pull himself away from his work for a breather. He almost envied the teams that rushed between Konoha and the nearest towns to carry loads of supplies. But he didn't quite envy them, because he had to be in the village when there was news.
He didn't wait for a messenger from Tsunade when Sasuke's team returned. There was no need. Hōseki had been more than willing to sit by the gates and wait for her mistress (and then "the cat people," as she referred to Itachi and Sasuke when told they might be able to help) to return. She had not been willing to listen to Pakkun's gentle explanation that she shouldn't get her hopes up.
Kakashi hadn't tried to dissuade her, not particularly interested in being an enormous hypocrite. No one was going to complain about an extra set of ears and a sharp nose, even if the attitude that came with was a bit of a bummer.
Not having Uzumaki-esque chakra reserves, it was a constant drain on his abilities to maintain a summoning for days on end (much less two) as Aiko had apparently done for the last week, but he hadn't argued. He'd been lucky enough that Hōseki had allowed him to summon her in an attempt to find out what she knew. It turned out to be almost nothing, a bitter pill in and of itself. Agreeing to help her stay in the human world to find out what had happened was a foregone conclusion, despite knowing that the solution was short-term at best.
When a mournful yap caught his ear, Kakashi dropped his burden without so much as looking back and bounded towards Hokage tower. He actually beat Sasuke's team there. Doubtlessly they were gaping at the destruction instead of speeding over.
Tsunade sighed, but didn't say a thing when he leaned against the wall facing the door to wait. Things became spectacularly more uncomfortable when Jiraiya joined them several minutes later and carefully avoided looking at Kakashi.
He understood the impulse. He'd chucked all his Icha Icha in the bin when he'd gotten to his apartment and discovered that his domicile was one of the lucky, still habitable places. Two minutes later, he had regretfully fished the books out and smoothed over the creases from his fit of temper. That didn't mean he'd felt much like reading them since. Maybe once he was less disappointed with the older man.
'I wonder if he expects me to castigate him?' Kakashi wondered bleakly. Now that his anger had cooled a bit… It was obvious that Jiraiya was doing a decent job of making himself miserable. It probably wasn't worth the effort to help.
The teenagers were a little less impassive than the three experienced shinobi. There was a collective cringe when Karin pushed open the door and they all saw him. They were probably thinking that they were about to be in trouble for their disobedience in Ame.
To be honest, he'd put that out of mind. There would be a reckoning, but not today. "Get out," Kakashi said quietly. "Everyone but Itachi. You three wait outside." His voice turned hard when Sasuke's face twisted and he opened his mouth to object. "This is not debatable," Kakashi clipped. Naruto looked disturbed, but was obedient enough to grab his teammate's shoulder and steer him out. As he went, the blonde whispered, "Itachi's a big boy now, mommy-bear. He'll be fine for a couple of minutes."
Itachi couldn't quite hide the hint of a smile around his eyes. He might not have been trying, as his brother wouldn't be able to see his face regardless.
Oddly, seeing the siblings look relatively happy put Kakashi's hackles up. There was an irony in Naruto comforting Sasuke about Itachi at this moment. Maybe Sasuke would repay the favor.
As soon as the door was closed and Sasuke's grouchy and defensive reply was cut off, Tsunade threw Kakashi a look that was half-way between questioning and annoyed, but he didn't care. This would go much faster without an audience. Kakashi drew himself up to his full height and paced directly in front of the younger man. He wasn't intentionally conveying danger, but Itachi seemed to sense it nonetheless.
"In Ame, you indicated you had information about one of my subordinates," Kakashi said quietly. "I want it, now."
He was mildly gratified to see that Itachi gaped slightly before he let his gaze wander over Kakashi's shoulder to Tsunade. She must have affirmed the order, because he opened his mouth.
"You refer to the Uzumaki girl, I assume?" At his terse nod, Itachi continued fluidly. "Very well, though I have trepidation about releasing this information, since she apparently deemed it unwise."
"And why would Aiko's opinion outweigh the Hokage's order?" Tsunade asked smartly. She was much cleaner than she had been the last time he'd seen her, but if anything, stress was pulling harder at her features and temper.
Somewhat wisely, the Uchiha backtracked a little. "Forgive me, Hokage-sama. I know how that sounds, but I believed that she was best qualified to make that decision at the time, since I did not have the information that she must. Years ago, I encountered Uzumaki-san's psyche when I returned to Konoha to investigate reports of instability after the attempted invasion."
"You mean when you attacked her," Kakashi clarified steadily, giving the younger man a hard stare. "She was what, twelve at the time?"
Even as the words left his mouth, he knew the aggression was unhelpful at this point in time. But Itachi's evasion was infuriating. That was a delicate way of saying that he'd assaulted someone less than half his skill level with genjutsu and presumably touched her mind in the way he'd touched Kakashi's, trapping her consciousness and rifling through her worst fears and the deepest reaches of her soul.
And he was supposedly loyal to Konoha. Konoha wasn't supposed to do that to her own.
"Not now, Kakashi," Tsunade dismissed, though her eyes weren't friendly either. "Continue."
Kakashi may have curled his lip into a snarl. Itachi actually hesitated before the next part- just for a moment, but enough that Kakashi believed he was seriously considering the possible impact of his words.
"I… considered the possibility that she was out of touch." Itachi's gaze remained fixed on Tsunade, despite the fact that Kakashi was in his personal space, and that Jiraiya looked a bit murderous at the reminder. "What I found in her psyche was distinctly odd. She knew a great deal that she could not possibly know, about things that had happened before she was born and had not yet come to pass. Some of those beliefs have since proved true, but many did not." Obviously unnerved, Itachi looked at Kakashi for just an instant. "It is my belief that she has some sort of gift of prophecy."
There was a clatter. All the shinobi moved in time to see that the pen Jiraiya had been fiddling with was rolling to a stop on the floor. The older man bent to pick it up, his mass of hair covering his face.
It took a moment for Itachi to pick back up on his trail of thought. "It seems to be often inaccurate, but still, I felt it would be most unwise to allow anyone else to come to know of her ability. Whether the ability was useful or not, she would be hunted for it."
Kakashi closed his eyes, and put a hand to his forehead. He had no reason to believe that Itachi was a liar, of course. That didn't mean that he wasn't barking mad. Even if he was insane, he was probably right in that a prophet would be a dangerous tool in unscrupulous hands. Someone who wanted to misuse potential information could do a great deal of harm with access to a seer. It wouldn't matter if the claim was true or not, so long as people believed it.
After a moment of silence, he pried his uncovered eye open and twisted to share a look with Tsunade.
She shrugged, clearly just as bemused as he was. "Jiraiya believes in prophecy," she shared noncommittally, giving just the shortest glance in her partner's direction. "You'll forgive me if I don't, of course, but I can still see that this claim would make Aiko a target. Do you have any evidence of this supposed ability?"
"She knew that I acted on orders from Konoha," Itachi offered up quietly. "As well as that Pein was not the true leader of Akatsuki. Or rather, I suppose it would be more accurate to say that she suspected he was not Akatsuki's leader. In other possible futures, Orochimaru would have killed Sandaime-sama and taken on Sasuke as an apprentice."
Tsunade nearly choked.
"Clearly, that did not come to pass, and the future is therefore not a book to be read at leisure," Itachi continued respectfully. "Although Aiko may have some experience with discerning how certain outcomes may be reached. You did have a second apprentice in that future as well," Itachi shared, nodding slightly at Tsunade. "So perhaps some things are set in stone."
If that were true, it would explain Aiko's reticence on this bizarre topic. Sharing the future could change it, and possibly for the worse. It seemed likely that trying to ensure a desirable future could circumvent it. Keeping quiet may have been her best option. Besides, who would have believed her?
He wouldn't have.
"And who was my alternate future's apprentice?" Tsunade rasped dryly, clearly trying for detached nonchalance and not entirely succeeding.
"A girl with pink hair. I did not recognize her."
That sentence felt like a physical blow to the gut. Weakly, Kakashi took a shuddering breath and backed away, trying to regain his composure.
He had no idea how Itachi could possibly have known about Sakura. But god, that meant that if he was right, somehow she could have been saved. And she would have become so strong. It was like losing a student for the first time all over again.
Maybe it just hit him especially hard because he'd just lost his second student.
'No. I haven't lost her yet.' Kakashi grit his teeth and denied that bleak thought, fingers reaching for the kunai in his thigh pouch like a safety blanket. He would have to ask Jiraiya how it was possible, since the Hiraishin should have faded when Aiko died. But he could still feel her chakra humming faintly along the seal. She wasn't dead. And if she wasn't dead, she could be helped.
Unlike Sakura. Poor sweet Sakura.
Jiraiya was giving him a sympathetic look that made him want to hide under the table, rather than risk condolences again. It was belatedly that he realized the other two shinobi were eying him warily. Ah. That was right. Tsunade had never even met Sakura, and Kakashi hadn't exactly had a heart-to-heart with her on the topic. She wouldn't know who Itachi was talking about.
Tsunade still didn't look entirely convinced, but Kakashi had been shown enough circumstantial evidence to at least want more information. He opened his mouth to confirm that Itachi had referenced someone he knew, but shut it without saying a word. They'd already discerned as much from his reaction, and he didn't feel the need to start storytime. Not now.
'Did Aiko know Sakura was going to die?' Kakashi flinched when the possibility hit him like a fist to the head, wracking his memory for anything that hinted one way or the other. Had she said anything that could have been a clue? Looked nervous? No… Maybe she'd pushed the kids a little harder than usual in training, but that made sense when nominating absolute rookies for a Chuunin exam.
'I don't think she knew. Or that she really believed it would happen. Maybe… If Itachi is telling the truth and correct, that could explain why Aiko had an out of character breakdown that night,' he concluded bleakly.
"You said she knew things from before she was born?" Jiraiya spoke for the first time, looking disturbed. "Like what?"
Itachi seemed ready for that question. "Odds and ends," he admitted. "Nothing coherent. A red-headed girl being kidnapped by Kumo nin and saved by a blonde boy. Something about a female jinchuuriki. And…" he frowned, looking perturbed. "my mother," Itachi added flatly. "Holding her the day she was born, in the Hokage's office."
'I have no idea what any of that would be about,' Kakashi thought, slightly relieved. In this, perhaps he preferred ignorance to knowledge of the specific things Aiko had already known about. Judging by the shell-shocked look on Jiraiya's face, something Itachi had said had rung a bell.
The Sannin exchanged an uneasy look. "Uchiha Mikoto was with Aiko when I brought Naruto up," Jiraiya admitted quietly.
"And the reports on Aiko's birth were in her handwriting," Tsunade added wryly. After a moment, her eyes widened and she cursed. "Hell, I wonder if the birth anomaly she recorded had anything to do with-"
"Birth anomaly?" Kakashi interrupted rudely. He'd never heard of anything like that.
"Well, yes," Tsunade said warily. "When Shizune was giving her an advanced physical, she realized that Aiko's chakra composition didn't match her old readings at all. Two days ago, Aiko had perfectly balanced spiritual and physical energy."
That was unlikely. Perfect balance was prized for the way it augmented chakra control abilities, but almost impossible to achieve. Sakura had been damn close. Aiko had never had bad chakra control, but hers wasn't good, either. It was far better than Naruto's, but not as polished as Sasuke's had been at comparative points in their early training.
"But her old records indicated a sharp imbalance in favor of spiritual chakra," the Hokage continued. "Shizune tried to make a timeline to see if the last results were typical, or just an unusually high reading on that particular day." Tsunade exhaled deeply, brow furrowed. "It was typical. Aiko had disproportionate chakra literally since the day she was born."
Creepy.
"That's very strange," Jiraiya said flatly. "What, like a little too much soul tagged along for the ride or something?"
Kakashi didn't believe in souls, but he was now very uncomfortable with the topic of conversation for a reason he couldn't define.
Tsunade cracked her knuckles, giving Kakashi one last troubled look. He was too busy thinking to feel up to reassuring her that he wasn't about to snap. After a moment, she sighed and turned her attention back to Itachi. "Tell me everything you remember."
Kakashi managed to drag himself out of paranoid re-examinations of rather faint memories in order to listen to that. Most of what Itachi knew was all but useless now, hopelessly outdated. According to Itachi, Aiko had known a fair bit about Akatsuki members, but most of them were dead now. So perhaps she had known what she was doing in feigning ignorance and quietly steering actions where she could. It was more than a bit unnerving to hear that she'd believed that the Akatsuki known as Tobi might be the long-dead Uchiha Madara, all things considered.
'Itachi made the same claim when we were in Ame,' he remembered. There had been more time-sensitive issues at the time, but… 'That could be a clue. If Itachi is right, and Madara uses dead Uchiha bodies as hosts, we might be able to track down whose he is using to get some idea as to his current capabilities.'
Feeling ill, Kakashi exchanged a glance with Tsunade. Itachi might have taken it for doubt, because he went on to mention that he had thought she was suspiciously deferential to Tobi.
"She was very careful not to provoke," Itachi informed.
"That doesn't sound much like Aiko in normal circumstances," Tsunade acknowledged a bit weakly. The woman was right. When she felt in danger, Aiko defaulted to flippancy and bravado rather than cautiousness.
And he had thought he smelled an Uchiha. (Cat-loving bastards, Kakashi thought uncharitably. And unfairly—he liked cats just fine himself). If Kakashi had discovered that Obito's eye could be used to tear dimensional rifts, then an Uchiha with a hundred years worth of time to waste and ability to select a designer meat-sack certainly could have encountered the power through experiment as well. That would have been how he had taken Aiko out of the hospital. It fit neatly.
However much circumstantial evidence there appeared to be, there was still a problem with this story.
"Madara should be dead," he rejected. That point he couldn't get over. "He's not a scientist like Orochimaru. There's no reason to believe Madara would possess the requisite skill-set to survive for so long. How would he transfer bodies?"
"I have considered the issue many time," Itachi agreed somberly. "It is my belief that after Madara was defeated at the Valley of the End, the Hokage let Madara go out of the memory of their old friendship. I do not know how he clung to life for so many years, but if anyone could, it would be him."
"Tobi did display interest in Aiko," Tsunade mused, face pale. "It fits."
Itachi narrowed his half-blind eyes on Tsunade with new intensity. "So Naruto-san informed me. I do not know how her knowledge could have come to his attention. I told no one."
"He's an Uchiha too," Jiraiya pointed out sourly, sneering ever so slightly at Itachi. The Uchiha looked uncomfortable. "If you could rummage around her psyche and discover the information, who is to say that he couldn't?
Unsurprisingly, Itachi didn't want to answer that. "Has Tobi come to Konoha?" he asked cautiously.
' I forgot he didn't know what was going on.'
It wasn't a bad guess.
"Yes, and he took Aiko with him when he left." Tsunade paused, apparently noting the collective wince from the light-haired men in the room. "Sorry," she added belatedly.
Kakashi waved her apology off, though the sting of her bluntness hadn't faded.
They stayed in that office for another hour wringing Itachi for information. Unsurprisingly, Kakashi somehow discovered a capacity to feel even worse by the time they were done.
'It would have been nice if he'd known anything useful. Or if he'd shared this before.' Kakashi stayed in his dark thoughts even as Itachi left and the three bored teenagers filed into the doorway in his stead. 'If we'd known, we would have been more careful. Someone would have watched Aiko directly.'
Tsunade seemed to take it as a possible boon that Aiko was currently amnesiac, whether through physical trauma or inability to cope with the information. (She'd nearly theorized aloud that it was because Nagato's jutsu really had worked at restoring her to the state she should be in, a state without strange extra knowledge, before Kakashi's obvious bad mood had brought her back down.) That meant that Madara couldn't get what she'd known out of her. It was good for Konoha as a whole, even if it wasn't for Aiko.
Of course, that didn't mean that she wouldn't have new visions that would endanger Konoha. And if she never did, Madara would probably decide she was worthless and kill her. There was no way to win. He would probably only keep her alive as long as she was useful to him. Of course, that didn't mean much about what state she would be kept in. There were a good many tortures that would leave a person perfectly capable of talking.
"There hasn't been much change since Kakashi left Ame," Sasuke began, clearly thinking they were present for a debriefing of the situation in Ame. Tsunade held up a palm, indicating that he should stop talking.
"Not important right now," she dismissed. "If there were no real changes, in any case. That's not our biggest concern. Right now, Konoha is focusing on itself. I expect all three of you to devote yourselves wholeheartedly to strengthening the village. We are in grave danger at the moment. Our numbers aren't particularly low, but our people are on the streets and we have no fortifications. We're a huge target."
'Nice speech, but that's not why they're here,' Kakashi thought sourly. Honestly. He knew perfectly well that medics were masters of compartmentalization—you had to be, to clinically diagnose bleeding hunks of meat instead of crying over wounded comrades—but at the moment, it rankled.
"But that's not why you're here," Tsunade added guiltily, fidgeting.
'That was uncanny.' Kakashi gave her a suspicious look, which she apparently took as motivation to jump right to the heart of the matter.
"Naruto, your sister is missing in action." Tsunade grimaced slightly. "And she's probably unaware of the danger of her situation."
' Is she technically missing in action? She wasn't in a combat situation at the time.'
That wasn't a productive line of thought. He steered away from it.
"What." It wasn't really a question, but Naruto seemed to want an answer. At his side, Sasuke was dangerously still. "How?"
"No, when," Karin interrupted, frowning. "When did this happen? I thought that the attack was days ago, and that the Ame nin already left."
Kakashi forced himself to wonder how Karin had heard that Ame nin were present instead of listening to the information he himself had compiled for Tsunade. He'd been dwelling on it for days, and turning the same information over hadn't born any fruit.
"She was taken out of the hospital," Tsunade said quietly. "We don't know who, other than that he is the Akatsuki who went by the name Tobi. Kakashi suspects he's an Uchiha. Itachi claims that Madara Uchiha may be possessing younger Uchiha in order to survive, and that this Tobi was the real head of Akatsuki."
He just didn't have any damn ideas. There hadn't been anything new to add until Itachi's report. There had to be a clue there. Something to go off of, a starting place at least.
"An Uchiha?" Sasuke asked incredulously, mouth not quite managing to close. "Where are these people hiding? Are you storing them in your lingerie drawer for when you really need to wow someone?"
'That's an odd thing to say,' Kakashi noted. 'I'm guessing there's something I haven't been told.'
Judging by the look on Itachi's face, he hadn't been told either.
"Probably Uchiha Madara," Jiraiya inserted uncomfortably, ruffling the back of his hair. "That would explain the grudge against Konoha personally."
'It's sad that I'm almost hoping it really was Uchiha Madara and not some mysterious Uchiha survivor,' Kakashi thought bleakly. Despite the frightening likelihood that Madara would be ill-disposed to treating an Uzumaki gently, he at least wasn't a complete unknown. There had to be some way to gather information about him. Childhood haunts, or habits, or mannerisms that could be used to identify him despite a henge or other disguise. It was the only clue he had, so he had to hope it was true.
"I don't- but…" Naruto shook his head, bewildered. His big blue eyes wavered, begging for someone to make it better.
It hurt, to see that Naruto still retained that bit of childish reliance on someone else to fix everything. Or rather, it hurt to see it and know that he couldn't do a thing to preserve it.
'Maybe Aiko made a mistake by taking care of everything Naruto couldn't handle,' Kakashi thought dully.
"He should be long dead," Sasuke argued. A man after Kakashi's own heart, he made the same argument the Copy-nin had made when he'd heard that theory.
"That's crazy," Naruto agreed.
The Hokage sighed. "Telling him that he should be dead probably won't help." Tsunade shared a grim glance with Jiraiya. "When we know more, you'll be the first to hear about it. I promise that we'll find her if there's any way."
Karin was crying silently, tears slipping down without her face moving or wrenched up. Her jaw was hard, and her chin didn't waver. Sasuke was a picture of grim understanding, the other end of the emotional spectrum.
' Strange that Karin is the most openly upset. She knew Aiko the least amount of time.'
A second later, Naruto disproved Kakashi's judgment by screwing his face up. Counter-intuitively, he looked more angry than sad.
"This is bullshit!" Naruto shouted, banging a fist on Tsunade's desk. It shook under the weight, despite looking perfectly sturdy. He didn't seem to notice, but he didn't hit it again. "Don't talk like this is the end or something. She's fine. She's always fine. She'll probably saunter right in the gates and then pretend like she doesn't even understand why we were worried."
"Naruto, don't be immature," Tsunade snapped, glaring at him in obvious frustration at his intentional pig-headedness. "No one is invincible."
"Then we'll go find her," Naruto countered immediately. Ah, Kakashi realized. He'd talked Tsunade into a corner. That was a rather good rhetorical play, for a teenager in a temper. "No offense, but it's stupid to work on putting up buildings when a real person needs help. I'm not doing it." Naruto crossed his arms combatively.
"You'll do what you're told, or you won't be on the team looking for her," Tsunade rejoined fiercely, placing her palms down and leaning over her desk. "Calm the hell down. I didn't say we were giving up, did I? We can't do anything without some information or clues as to where to start, so this is the time that your scruffy godfather and his intelligence network are the only ones who can do anything. Once we have a better idea than 'outside the village', then you can go tear through anyone in your way."
Sullenly, Naruto nodded, apparently not trusting himself to speak. Tsunade kindly pretended not to see Karin curl her fingers around his, or Sasuke carefully lean his shoulder against Naruto's.
Kakashi couldn't stop looking, however, feeling melancholy and strangely empty. Team. They were a good team.
They were probably better off without him. Everything he touched died. With the exception of Gai, but that probably had more to do with Gai's sturdiness than Kakashi's competency as a human being.
He looked away with herculean effort. "I'll contact you as soon as I know something." Even to his ears, his voice sounded strange. Sasuke looked at him sharply. "Assuming all three of you want in on this mission, of course. I'll see you later."
He left before they could say anything, unable to be in that room any longer.