FIC: Naruto: Admiring with the Heart (2)
Title: Admiring with the Heart (2/?)
Author: lilpocketninja
Rating: R
Warnings: Gore and the aftermath there of (CSI-level stuff); language; more plot than romance.
Pairings: Kakashi/Iruka (eventually)
Notes: My CSI-fangirlism rears its ugly head. D Yay. Also, am trying to name-smoosh Kakashi and Columbo and not having any success. ‘Kakashbo’? ‘Columashi’? (amuses self) Thanks to Monopoly for the beta and encouragement!
***
“To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.” --Theophile Gautier
***
Kakashi stared at Tsunade, not quiet believing what he was hearing. The two ANBU behind her shifted as she spoke; that they moved at all screamed their distress as loudly as a civilian scream. Kakashi, too, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He realized he had lost the thread of what Tsunade was saying and mentally snapped back to attention.
“-All of the children are fine, and Iruka will be after a few days’ sleep, but you can see why this needs to be investigated and taken care of quickly. The Hyuuga are already crawling up my ass about shutting down ANBU, ANBU wants to make sure one of their own does the investigating, and I just want the damn thing solved.” To emphasize her frustration, the Hokage took a deep drink from a silver flask and wiped her mouth messily on the sleeve of her official robe of office. TonTon grunted from his mistress’s lap, not appreciating her sharp tone of voice. Kakashi sympathized.
“Find out why Hatori - the Rooster - decided to attack a building full of children, and find out if he was working alone or if this is something bigger. I have a bad feeling, brat.” Kakashi nodded, looking thoughtful and mulling over his memories of the man in question. The Rooster had never behaved unstably, but then few ANBU members did before they snapped and started killing people.
“Yes, Tsunade-sama.”
“I expect Iruka will be able to help you once he’s on his feet again. He has S-ranked clearance…” Tsunade smirked at Kakashi’s widened eye “… and he should be useful. Dismissed.” Kakashi bowed.
As he left the room, Tsunade called out with a snort: “Oh, and Kakashi? Don’t underestimate him! It pisses him off.” Kakashi rolled his eyes and twirled his hand in a half-salute, half-dismissal.
A few minutes later, Kakashi stood in front of the morgue. While Tsunade clearly wanted him to make nice with the Chunin school teacher, Kakashi had never liked the man and chose to start here instead. After several minutes of proving his security clearance and identity, he finally made it into the back rooms. Under his mask, the jounin wrinkled his nose: the whole place smelled of death and antiseptic, two things he hated. Quickly shrugging it off, he made his way to the cold room and entered without knocking. When he saw the corpse lying on the slab, he let out a low whistle. The man examining the body looked up and grinned at him.
“Yosh. What’ve we got, Doc?” Kakashi enquired as he leaned over the cadaver, careful not to touch. Even by ninja standards, the remains were gruesome. The skin looked brown, leathery to the touch and completely dry. Under it, a fine layer of dust had settled, evidently made of dried out tissue shaken off the body during transit. Gross, Kakashi thought, but impressive.
Doc’s grin widened at Kakashi’s obvious surprise. The man was a medic-nin whose fascination with death had veered in a direction opposite of Orochimaru’s. Rather than attempting to avoid death, Doc studied it and discovered new treatments and jutsu. Men like him were the reason it was dangerous for ninja bodies to fall into the hands of other villages; with a few tests, Doc could tell everything about a person’s life. Kakashi found the man creepy, but useful - an opinion shared by most of the village. The man’s appearance only reinforced it: his runny blue eyes bulged and crossed at random, and he walked with a clink from a wooden leg that echoed in the large, cool room as he made his way across it to grab his notes.
“What you’re seeing here is, hn, the results of the ‘Miira no Jutsu,’ special technique of the deceased ANBU dragon. Performed by, hmm, Umino Iruka. To, uh, simplify: this jutsu sucks out all the water and chakra from a body. Happens almost instantly, turns the victim nearly to dust.” Kakashi whistled again - he hadn’t expected the schoolteacher to use such a powerful ninjutsu; even when Umino radiated anger, his chakra signature read as weak to the jounin. Granted, most people who weren’t Sennin, Hokage, or demon vessels read as weak to Kakashi, but Umino seemed especially pitiful. A move like the one Doc described took a lot of chakra and razor sharp-control - Kakashi ought to know, since he had copied the jutsu from the ANBU in question years ago. No wonder Umino had ended up in the hospital, attempting such an advanced move. From what Kakashi had seen of the man, Iruka-sensei didn’t know his place, but this - this was just stupidity. ‘Or courage,’ said a tiny idealistic voice in the back of Kakashi’s mind. He squashed it.
“Any other jutsu used on this body you can detect? Mind control?” Doc shook his head, shrugging and holding out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“The jutsu sucks all of the chakra out of the victim’s body. It would erase any evidence of - anything, really. Uh.” Kakashi nodded, once, and gave a final glance over the body. There were a few nicks that looked fresher than the others, presumably created during the fight but otherwise - nothing. A total absence of spiritual energy. Kakashi shivered.
“Let me know if you figure anything out,” Kakashi instructed before disappearing in an abrupt cloud of smoke.
Still unwilling to interview Iruka-sensei, Kakashi teleported to the orphanage instead. He’d never visited the place himself, though Yodaime had founded it and one of his students had grown up there. From the outside, the building looked more like a prison than a children’s home. The copy-nin frowned, wondering how the stark, grey building had housed the rambunctious Naruto for the first ten years of his life. A smile tugged his lips when he spotted a faded string of orange obscenities at a six-year-old’s eye level. Some things, it seemed, never change.
When he went from the heat of the almost-summer Konoha noon into the cool, dark reception area, Kakashi had to blink a few times before his eyes adjusted. Like the outside of the building, the lobby looked depressing and oppressive. From somewhere in the distance, the sound of a wailing baby pulsed into the room. The place set Kakashi’s teeth on edge.
Behind the desk sat a tired-looking woman who glanced up and gave him a tight smile even as her eyes sent a clear warning. Kakashi couldn’t blame her for wanting him to go away, after what had happened the day before. The jounin had long since become desensitized to the way human beings treated each other, but the thought of some one attacking war orphans made his firsts clench and his lazy mouth draw into a frown.
“I’m here to see the room where the attack took place.” The woman stood gracelessly and led him along with slow, plodding steps.
“Anbu-san came in around five yesterday morning, like usual. He tends to work with the older kids, but with Naruto-kun gone we’re short in the nursery so he went there instead,” she explained in a weary voice as they walked through the back. Kakashi’s eyebrows rose at the mention of his obnoxious former student; he hadn’t know that the boy volunteered here. Maybe if he’d taken more of an interest in team seven’s lives, like Iruka-sensei, things with them might not have ended in disaster. Kakashi shook that thought away as they stopped at a doorway painted in light pastel blue and radiating leftover killing intent.
Inside, the dark chakra became even more overbearing, along with an intense smell of decay wafting from a puddle near the center of the room. He walked over to it, using his chakra to keep himself mostly off the ground and not disturbing the footprints and blood splatter in the carpet. He stopped a foot from the stain, wishing his ANBU training and affinity with nin-dogs had not heightened his sense of smell quite so much. A quick glance verified Kakashi’s theory that the liquid was the byproduct of the Miira no Jutsu.
Satisfied that he knew where the fight ended, Kakashi set about figuring out where it had begun. Unfortunately, half a dozen people - at least - had traipsed through here afterward, so the footprints were virtually useless, though he could at least see where the toddlers had been herded together into a definable corner. From that he could guess roughly what had happened, combined with the official reports from the receptionist and older children. The receptionist had been helping back here, and as soon as the Anbu started showing signs of agitation she had shoved all the children she could reach against the back wall and attempted to protect them from their attacker. Of course, she was a civilian, so her attempt would have gotten them killed had Umino not come bursting in at just the right moment. Suspicious, Kakashi thought, but dismissed it: Iruka-sensei had no reason to stage an attack. He was already high in the esteem of Tsunade-sama and several of the council members, so a rescue wouldn’t boost his already high reputation enough to bother. No other reason presented itself, so the jounin felt certain that the speculation was ridiculous.
Humming and deciding that he’d seen all he could with his regular eye, Kakashi flipped his headband up and let his spinning red gaze circle the room. From the rapidly depleting blue and red swirls of chakra, the scene of battle easily snapped into place. The faintest blur floated in front of the row of cribs, a red burst of killing intent - then the blue of Umino bursting through the window- the swirling purples of their fight that took them all around the room - and then the near-blinding red surrounding the puddle of remains. Between he could spot several places where physical combat had probably taken place; Umino’d been getting his ass kicked, but in a chunnin verses Anbu fight that was to be expected. For Umino to still be alive testified either to the Anbu’s affected state of mind or the teacher’s skill. Kakashi hmm’d again and covered his eye before walking out of the room and teleporting away.
A few seconds later, he popped back into existence in front of the hospital. Unlike a lot of people, Kakashi did not hate hospitals. They held no association with death for him - all the death he had witnessed was out on the battlefield, not in the peaceful confines of Konoha’s medical center. Still, he wasn’t looking forward to this interview and hung around for a few minutes outside, watching people over the orange cover of his book. Finally he sighed, pushed himself off the statue he had been leaning against, and walked in the direction opposite the hospital. As soon as he rounded a corner, Kakashi disappeared and was replaced by one Haruno Sakura. She had left the village three days ago on a mission for her new sensei, would not return for another ten, and had easy access to the entire hospital as Tsunade’s protégé. If she came back and discovered that her former sensei had ‘borrowed’ her appearance for snooping, then there would be pain and yelling, but for now it was perfect.
Sakura/Kakashi strolled through the doors unchallenged, gave a bright smile to the receptionist, and hurried up two floors. No one even glanced his way as he grabbed the chart hanging outside the door and tried to make some sense of the shorthand covering the thick file. The first few pages contained standard information on birth and childhood illness, the report from when the teacher had obtained his scar during a standard academy training exercise, and shortly after that the handwriting switched to a familiar one: Tsunade’s. What on earth would the Sennin have been doing treating a newly-minted genin? Kakashi raised one of Sakura’s pink eyebrows and wandered over to a waiting area where he could more comfortably pursue the file.
A few hours later, the transformed copy-nin was startled out of his trance by a cup of coffee shoved under his nose. He looked up through Sakura’s long eyelashes at the Hokage, who was smirking at him and sipping her own -- probably spiked - cup of steaming liquid. Kakashi accepted it calmly and took a long sip - it was nice to do it without the mask - before grinning sheepishly at her.
“If you wanted to learn about him, you should have asked. Not snooped around in my hospital.” Kakashi grimaced; he preferred reading over people in every situation. Still, the file hadn’t told him much. It had been filled with a lot of diagrams, medical shorthand, and magazine clippings with words longer than his hand. None of it meant anything to a non-medic-nin. Tsunade was right. The thought made him grimace again.
“So tell me, then. What’s all this about? Monthly checkups aren’t standard for a chunnin, are they?”
“Ask him, not me, brat. I won’t tell you Iruka-sensei’s secrets. They aren’t relevant to the investigation. Focus on figuring this out, not on your curiosity!” Tsunade snapped, poking Kakashi in the chest with one long nail. He sighed theatrically and released the henge, popping back into his own form with a puff of smoke that drew a glare from the head nurse. Kakashi waved at her before Tsunade shoved him in the direction of Umino’s room with instructions to “grow the hell up, already.”
Stepping inside the room, Kakashi abandoned all sense of playfulness and slipped into what he called “mission mode.” An expression of determination lit up his frequently boredom-dulled blue eyes as his gaze fell onto Umino. Rather than lying asleep as Kakashi had expected, the teacher sat in the bed grading papers and sipping something from a thermos. Around him, a riot of construction-paper cards declared his class’s hope that he would get better soon and return to school before Asuma-sensei killed them all. Interspersed were huge vases of flowers, and Kakashi wondered who in the village was soppy enough to bring such extravagant bouquets to someone suffering from nothing more serious than chakra depletion. A familiar signature on a paper attached to a particularly large vase attracted his attention, and Kakashi found himself again surprised: it seemed that the Hokage herself wanted Umino to get well soon. He snorted, concluding that Tsunade had gone soft in her old age. The noise drew the teacher’s attention away from his marking and Umino’s eyes widened in surprise. Kakashi had to supress a laugh as the man struggled to find something polite to say despite his puzzlement.
“Kakashi-sensei! I - er -“
“Hello, Iruka-sensei. Feeling better?”
“Much, thank you,” Umino responded automatically, though his tone still betrayed confusion as to why a jounin who held him in contempt would be coming to visit. Taking pity on the man, Kakashi decided he ought to explain rather than leave him gaping.
“I’ve been put in charge of the investigation of the incident. Tsunade-sama believes you will be of some assistance?” Now Umino looked as though he were back in familiar territory; the man nodded and looked thoughtful. Kakashi wondered why he showed no surprise that he had been drafted to help with an internal investigation, a job usually reserved for jounin.
“Tsunade-sensei has always had more confidence in me than I deserve, I’m afraid, but I will do my best to assist you in any way.” Kakashi felt that there should be a limit to the number of times someone made him raise his eyebrow in a morning. Sensei? No one in the village called Tsunade that anymore, not even Shizune who had trained under her since her genin days. “Er, sama. Tsunade-sama,” Umino corrected quickly, but the damage was done. Kakashi added this to a list of things he had to find out about the man before recalling Tsunade’s words and realizing that he had slipped out of mission mode. He snapped back into it quickly.
“As soon as you’re out of the hospital, we’ll revisit the scene together. For now, though, I’ll interview you. You haven’t filled a report yet, have you?” His tone was mildly disapproving, though he had no right to be. After all, Kakashi’s own mission completion/report filing gaps were legend in the missions office. Still, the surge of indignant anger from the teacher amused him.
“I have only just regained consciousness, Kakashi-sensei. But the report is right here,” Umino ground out between his teeth, glaring at Kakashi and snatching a scroll from the table at his bedside. The jounin took the scroll thrust in his direction with an ‘hm’ and skimmed the tiny, neat characters only to discover that they matched the other reports almost perfectly. That proved either that they were telling the truth, or had all been mind wiped; a shinobi with as much experience as Kakashi dismissed nothing, especially in such suspicious circumstances.
“The jutsu you used - it isn’t in the archives. Tell me about it,” he demanded without taking his eyes off the report. Umino sighed and shifted, rubbing his head and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“The miira no jutsu is a technique developed by my father. It’s a water jutsu, which is what my family specializes in. It coats a person in chakra -“
“I know how it works, yes. Your father developed it? Did he teach it to anyone?” If Umino was annoyed at being cut off, he didn’t show it. Instead he continued rubbing his nose just above the scar and explaining without looking at Kakashi.
“No. I learned it from his journals, after his death. It is in the archives, by the way, just locked in the ANBU records room.” Umino gave him a strange look; Kakashi didn’t care. He was too busy being shocked that the overly polite school teacher with no sense of rank was evidently the son of the same Dragon-san Kakashi had worked with years ago in ANBU. That man had been quiet, efficient, and deadly -- dead opposite of Umino Iruka. Kakashi shook his head, trying to dislodge the shock and turned his attention back to the conversation.
“Ah. How did you manage to use it? A jutsu like that is probably A-class and you-“
“People do amazing things when their lives are on the line, Kakashi-sensei. Even mere chunin.” The bitterness in Umino’s voice made Kakashi look up sharply and study him for a long moment. The copy-nin felt the familiar twitch of curiosity that signaled an obsession, a new puzzle that would drive him crazy until he managed to snap every last piece into place. But, he acknowledged, that would have to wait until they figured out why the Rooster had snapped.
“They do; what you did was exceptional even under the circumstances. You should be tested for jounin.” Kakashi felt no shame in the statement, though he disliked the man; it wasn’t praise, it was the truth, and shinobi could not afford grudges or idiotic pride. He had expected a different reaction to the praise, however; instead of blushing, Umino scowled and glared at his hands.
“As I said, Kakashi-sensei. The circumstances were extraordinary. I am not jounin material, just a school teacher. I barely have the chakra to teach the children what they need to learn.”
Before Kakashi could object, or try to counter Iruka’s self loathing, a nurse busted in to check on the patient.
“Have you been bothering Umino-san?” The woman asked, her nostrils fairing in quiet anger and her eyes glinting at the man who dared distract Umino-san with something so unimportant as an A-class internal investigation. It was the same nurse that had seen Kakashi release the henge earlier, and he realized that he had made an enemy. The thought amused him.
“I was just leaving,” he assured her, holding up his hands palm-outward. Rather than teleport away and risk even more of her ire, he took the conventional exit. As he closed the door behind himself, Kakashi caught a glance of Umino’s face over his shoulder. The man was still frowning with a strange look of sorrow clouding his eyes.
-TBC-
Author: lilpocketninja
Rating: R
Warnings: Gore and the aftermath there of (CSI-level stuff); language; more plot than romance.
Pairings: Kakashi/Iruka (eventually)
Notes: My CSI-fangirlism rears its ugly head. D Yay. Also, am trying to name-smoosh Kakashi and Columbo and not having any success. ‘Kakashbo’? ‘Columashi’? (amuses self) Thanks to Monopoly for the beta and encouragement!
***
“To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.” --Theophile Gautier
***
Kakashi stared at Tsunade, not quiet believing what he was hearing. The two ANBU behind her shifted as she spoke; that they moved at all screamed their distress as loudly as a civilian scream. Kakashi, too, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He realized he had lost the thread of what Tsunade was saying and mentally snapped back to attention.
“-All of the children are fine, and Iruka will be after a few days’ sleep, but you can see why this needs to be investigated and taken care of quickly. The Hyuuga are already crawling up my ass about shutting down ANBU, ANBU wants to make sure one of their own does the investigating, and I just want the damn thing solved.” To emphasize her frustration, the Hokage took a deep drink from a silver flask and wiped her mouth messily on the sleeve of her official robe of office. TonTon grunted from his mistress’s lap, not appreciating her sharp tone of voice. Kakashi sympathized.
“Find out why Hatori - the Rooster - decided to attack a building full of children, and find out if he was working alone or if this is something bigger. I have a bad feeling, brat.” Kakashi nodded, looking thoughtful and mulling over his memories of the man in question. The Rooster had never behaved unstably, but then few ANBU members did before they snapped and started killing people.
“Yes, Tsunade-sama.”
“I expect Iruka will be able to help you once he’s on his feet again. He has S-ranked clearance…” Tsunade smirked at Kakashi’s widened eye “… and he should be useful. Dismissed.” Kakashi bowed.
As he left the room, Tsunade called out with a snort: “Oh, and Kakashi? Don’t underestimate him! It pisses him off.” Kakashi rolled his eyes and twirled his hand in a half-salute, half-dismissal.
A few minutes later, Kakashi stood in front of the morgue. While Tsunade clearly wanted him to make nice with the Chunin school teacher, Kakashi had never liked the man and chose to start here instead. After several minutes of proving his security clearance and identity, he finally made it into the back rooms. Under his mask, the jounin wrinkled his nose: the whole place smelled of death and antiseptic, two things he hated. Quickly shrugging it off, he made his way to the cold room and entered without knocking. When he saw the corpse lying on the slab, he let out a low whistle. The man examining the body looked up and grinned at him.
“Yosh. What’ve we got, Doc?” Kakashi enquired as he leaned over the cadaver, careful not to touch. Even by ninja standards, the remains were gruesome. The skin looked brown, leathery to the touch and completely dry. Under it, a fine layer of dust had settled, evidently made of dried out tissue shaken off the body during transit. Gross, Kakashi thought, but impressive.
Doc’s grin widened at Kakashi’s obvious surprise. The man was a medic-nin whose fascination with death had veered in a direction opposite of Orochimaru’s. Rather than attempting to avoid death, Doc studied it and discovered new treatments and jutsu. Men like him were the reason it was dangerous for ninja bodies to fall into the hands of other villages; with a few tests, Doc could tell everything about a person’s life. Kakashi found the man creepy, but useful - an opinion shared by most of the village. The man’s appearance only reinforced it: his runny blue eyes bulged and crossed at random, and he walked with a clink from a wooden leg that echoed in the large, cool room as he made his way across it to grab his notes.
“What you’re seeing here is, hn, the results of the ‘Miira no Jutsu,’ special technique of the deceased ANBU dragon. Performed by, hmm, Umino Iruka. To, uh, simplify: this jutsu sucks out all the water and chakra from a body. Happens almost instantly, turns the victim nearly to dust.” Kakashi whistled again - he hadn’t expected the schoolteacher to use such a powerful ninjutsu; even when Umino radiated anger, his chakra signature read as weak to the jounin. Granted, most people who weren’t Sennin, Hokage, or demon vessels read as weak to Kakashi, but Umino seemed especially pitiful. A move like the one Doc described took a lot of chakra and razor sharp-control - Kakashi ought to know, since he had copied the jutsu from the ANBU in question years ago. No wonder Umino had ended up in the hospital, attempting such an advanced move. From what Kakashi had seen of the man, Iruka-sensei didn’t know his place, but this - this was just stupidity. ‘Or courage,’ said a tiny idealistic voice in the back of Kakashi’s mind. He squashed it.
“Any other jutsu used on this body you can detect? Mind control?” Doc shook his head, shrugging and holding out his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“The jutsu sucks all of the chakra out of the victim’s body. It would erase any evidence of - anything, really. Uh.” Kakashi nodded, once, and gave a final glance over the body. There were a few nicks that looked fresher than the others, presumably created during the fight but otherwise - nothing. A total absence of spiritual energy. Kakashi shivered.
“Let me know if you figure anything out,” Kakashi instructed before disappearing in an abrupt cloud of smoke.
Still unwilling to interview Iruka-sensei, Kakashi teleported to the orphanage instead. He’d never visited the place himself, though Yodaime had founded it and one of his students had grown up there. From the outside, the building looked more like a prison than a children’s home. The copy-nin frowned, wondering how the stark, grey building had housed the rambunctious Naruto for the first ten years of his life. A smile tugged his lips when he spotted a faded string of orange obscenities at a six-year-old’s eye level. Some things, it seemed, never change.
When he went from the heat of the almost-summer Konoha noon into the cool, dark reception area, Kakashi had to blink a few times before his eyes adjusted. Like the outside of the building, the lobby looked depressing and oppressive. From somewhere in the distance, the sound of a wailing baby pulsed into the room. The place set Kakashi’s teeth on edge.
Behind the desk sat a tired-looking woman who glanced up and gave him a tight smile even as her eyes sent a clear warning. Kakashi couldn’t blame her for wanting him to go away, after what had happened the day before. The jounin had long since become desensitized to the way human beings treated each other, but the thought of some one attacking war orphans made his firsts clench and his lazy mouth draw into a frown.
“I’m here to see the room where the attack took place.” The woman stood gracelessly and led him along with slow, plodding steps.
“Anbu-san came in around five yesterday morning, like usual. He tends to work with the older kids, but with Naruto-kun gone we’re short in the nursery so he went there instead,” she explained in a weary voice as they walked through the back. Kakashi’s eyebrows rose at the mention of his obnoxious former student; he hadn’t know that the boy volunteered here. Maybe if he’d taken more of an interest in team seven’s lives, like Iruka-sensei, things with them might not have ended in disaster. Kakashi shook that thought away as they stopped at a doorway painted in light pastel blue and radiating leftover killing intent.
Inside, the dark chakra became even more overbearing, along with an intense smell of decay wafting from a puddle near the center of the room. He walked over to it, using his chakra to keep himself mostly off the ground and not disturbing the footprints and blood splatter in the carpet. He stopped a foot from the stain, wishing his ANBU training and affinity with nin-dogs had not heightened his sense of smell quite so much. A quick glance verified Kakashi’s theory that the liquid was the byproduct of the Miira no Jutsu.
Satisfied that he knew where the fight ended, Kakashi set about figuring out where it had begun. Unfortunately, half a dozen people - at least - had traipsed through here afterward, so the footprints were virtually useless, though he could at least see where the toddlers had been herded together into a definable corner. From that he could guess roughly what had happened, combined with the official reports from the receptionist and older children. The receptionist had been helping back here, and as soon as the Anbu started showing signs of agitation she had shoved all the children she could reach against the back wall and attempted to protect them from their attacker. Of course, she was a civilian, so her attempt would have gotten them killed had Umino not come bursting in at just the right moment. Suspicious, Kakashi thought, but dismissed it: Iruka-sensei had no reason to stage an attack. He was already high in the esteem of Tsunade-sama and several of the council members, so a rescue wouldn’t boost his already high reputation enough to bother. No other reason presented itself, so the jounin felt certain that the speculation was ridiculous.
Humming and deciding that he’d seen all he could with his regular eye, Kakashi flipped his headband up and let his spinning red gaze circle the room. From the rapidly depleting blue and red swirls of chakra, the scene of battle easily snapped into place. The faintest blur floated in front of the row of cribs, a red burst of killing intent - then the blue of Umino bursting through the window- the swirling purples of their fight that took them all around the room - and then the near-blinding red surrounding the puddle of remains. Between he could spot several places where physical combat had probably taken place; Umino’d been getting his ass kicked, but in a chunnin verses Anbu fight that was to be expected. For Umino to still be alive testified either to the Anbu’s affected state of mind or the teacher’s skill. Kakashi hmm’d again and covered his eye before walking out of the room and teleporting away.
A few seconds later, he popped back into existence in front of the hospital. Unlike a lot of people, Kakashi did not hate hospitals. They held no association with death for him - all the death he had witnessed was out on the battlefield, not in the peaceful confines of Konoha’s medical center. Still, he wasn’t looking forward to this interview and hung around for a few minutes outside, watching people over the orange cover of his book. Finally he sighed, pushed himself off the statue he had been leaning against, and walked in the direction opposite the hospital. As soon as he rounded a corner, Kakashi disappeared and was replaced by one Haruno Sakura. She had left the village three days ago on a mission for her new sensei, would not return for another ten, and had easy access to the entire hospital as Tsunade’s protégé. If she came back and discovered that her former sensei had ‘borrowed’ her appearance for snooping, then there would be pain and yelling, but for now it was perfect.
Sakura/Kakashi strolled through the doors unchallenged, gave a bright smile to the receptionist, and hurried up two floors. No one even glanced his way as he grabbed the chart hanging outside the door and tried to make some sense of the shorthand covering the thick file. The first few pages contained standard information on birth and childhood illness, the report from when the teacher had obtained his scar during a standard academy training exercise, and shortly after that the handwriting switched to a familiar one: Tsunade’s. What on earth would the Sennin have been doing treating a newly-minted genin? Kakashi raised one of Sakura’s pink eyebrows and wandered over to a waiting area where he could more comfortably pursue the file.
A few hours later, the transformed copy-nin was startled out of his trance by a cup of coffee shoved under his nose. He looked up through Sakura’s long eyelashes at the Hokage, who was smirking at him and sipping her own -- probably spiked - cup of steaming liquid. Kakashi accepted it calmly and took a long sip - it was nice to do it without the mask - before grinning sheepishly at her.
“If you wanted to learn about him, you should have asked. Not snooped around in my hospital.” Kakashi grimaced; he preferred reading over people in every situation. Still, the file hadn’t told him much. It had been filled with a lot of diagrams, medical shorthand, and magazine clippings with words longer than his hand. None of it meant anything to a non-medic-nin. Tsunade was right. The thought made him grimace again.
“So tell me, then. What’s all this about? Monthly checkups aren’t standard for a chunnin, are they?”
“Ask him, not me, brat. I won’t tell you Iruka-sensei’s secrets. They aren’t relevant to the investigation. Focus on figuring this out, not on your curiosity!” Tsunade snapped, poking Kakashi in the chest with one long nail. He sighed theatrically and released the henge, popping back into his own form with a puff of smoke that drew a glare from the head nurse. Kakashi waved at her before Tsunade shoved him in the direction of Umino’s room with instructions to “grow the hell up, already.”
Stepping inside the room, Kakashi abandoned all sense of playfulness and slipped into what he called “mission mode.” An expression of determination lit up his frequently boredom-dulled blue eyes as his gaze fell onto Umino. Rather than lying asleep as Kakashi had expected, the teacher sat in the bed grading papers and sipping something from a thermos. Around him, a riot of construction-paper cards declared his class’s hope that he would get better soon and return to school before Asuma-sensei killed them all. Interspersed were huge vases of flowers, and Kakashi wondered who in the village was soppy enough to bring such extravagant bouquets to someone suffering from nothing more serious than chakra depletion. A familiar signature on a paper attached to a particularly large vase attracted his attention, and Kakashi found himself again surprised: it seemed that the Hokage herself wanted Umino to get well soon. He snorted, concluding that Tsunade had gone soft in her old age. The noise drew the teacher’s attention away from his marking and Umino’s eyes widened in surprise. Kakashi had to supress a laugh as the man struggled to find something polite to say despite his puzzlement.
“Kakashi-sensei! I - er -“
“Hello, Iruka-sensei. Feeling better?”
“Much, thank you,” Umino responded automatically, though his tone still betrayed confusion as to why a jounin who held him in contempt would be coming to visit. Taking pity on the man, Kakashi decided he ought to explain rather than leave him gaping.
“I’ve been put in charge of the investigation of the incident. Tsunade-sama believes you will be of some assistance?” Now Umino looked as though he were back in familiar territory; the man nodded and looked thoughtful. Kakashi wondered why he showed no surprise that he had been drafted to help with an internal investigation, a job usually reserved for jounin.
“Tsunade-sensei has always had more confidence in me than I deserve, I’m afraid, but I will do my best to assist you in any way.” Kakashi felt that there should be a limit to the number of times someone made him raise his eyebrow in a morning. Sensei? No one in the village called Tsunade that anymore, not even Shizune who had trained under her since her genin days. “Er, sama. Tsunade-sama,” Umino corrected quickly, but the damage was done. Kakashi added this to a list of things he had to find out about the man before recalling Tsunade’s words and realizing that he had slipped out of mission mode. He snapped back into it quickly.
“As soon as you’re out of the hospital, we’ll revisit the scene together. For now, though, I’ll interview you. You haven’t filled a report yet, have you?” His tone was mildly disapproving, though he had no right to be. After all, Kakashi’s own mission completion/report filing gaps were legend in the missions office. Still, the surge of indignant anger from the teacher amused him.
“I have only just regained consciousness, Kakashi-sensei. But the report is right here,” Umino ground out between his teeth, glaring at Kakashi and snatching a scroll from the table at his bedside. The jounin took the scroll thrust in his direction with an ‘hm’ and skimmed the tiny, neat characters only to discover that they matched the other reports almost perfectly. That proved either that they were telling the truth, or had all been mind wiped; a shinobi with as much experience as Kakashi dismissed nothing, especially in such suspicious circumstances.
“The jutsu you used - it isn’t in the archives. Tell me about it,” he demanded without taking his eyes off the report. Umino sighed and shifted, rubbing his head and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“The miira no jutsu is a technique developed by my father. It’s a water jutsu, which is what my family specializes in. It coats a person in chakra -“
“I know how it works, yes. Your father developed it? Did he teach it to anyone?” If Umino was annoyed at being cut off, he didn’t show it. Instead he continued rubbing his nose just above the scar and explaining without looking at Kakashi.
“No. I learned it from his journals, after his death. It is in the archives, by the way, just locked in the ANBU records room.” Umino gave him a strange look; Kakashi didn’t care. He was too busy being shocked that the overly polite school teacher with no sense of rank was evidently the son of the same Dragon-san Kakashi had worked with years ago in ANBU. That man had been quiet, efficient, and deadly -- dead opposite of Umino Iruka. Kakashi shook his head, trying to dislodge the shock and turned his attention back to the conversation.
“Ah. How did you manage to use it? A jutsu like that is probably A-class and you-“
“People do amazing things when their lives are on the line, Kakashi-sensei. Even mere chunin.” The bitterness in Umino’s voice made Kakashi look up sharply and study him for a long moment. The copy-nin felt the familiar twitch of curiosity that signaled an obsession, a new puzzle that would drive him crazy until he managed to snap every last piece into place. But, he acknowledged, that would have to wait until they figured out why the Rooster had snapped.
“They do; what you did was exceptional even under the circumstances. You should be tested for jounin.” Kakashi felt no shame in the statement, though he disliked the man; it wasn’t praise, it was the truth, and shinobi could not afford grudges or idiotic pride. He had expected a different reaction to the praise, however; instead of blushing, Umino scowled and glared at his hands.
“As I said, Kakashi-sensei. The circumstances were extraordinary. I am not jounin material, just a school teacher. I barely have the chakra to teach the children what they need to learn.”
Before Kakashi could object, or try to counter Iruka’s self loathing, a nurse busted in to check on the patient.
“Have you been bothering Umino-san?” The woman asked, her nostrils fairing in quiet anger and her eyes glinting at the man who dared distract Umino-san with something so unimportant as an A-class internal investigation. It was the same nurse that had seen Kakashi release the henge earlier, and he realized that he had made an enemy. The thought amused him.
“I was just leaving,” he assured her, holding up his hands palm-outward. Rather than teleport away and risk even more of her ire, he took the conventional exit. As he closed the door behind himself, Kakashi caught a glance of Umino’s face over his shoulder. The man was still frowning with a strange look of sorrow clouding his eyes.
-TBC-