FIC: Naruto: Admiring with the Heart (3)
Title: Admiring with the Heart (3/12~)
Author: lilpocketninja / pocketnin / creamsoda
Rating: R
Warnings: Gore and the aftermath there of (CSI-level stuff); language; more plot than romance.
Pairings: Kakashi/Iruka (eventually)
Notes: I'm playing kind of fast and loose with the pre-manga timeline here, but then so does Kishimoto. ^^
***
***
Now that he knew where to find the records of the jutsu, Kakashi again visited the records archives. Reading the scroll only confirmed what he knew. The Jutsu was A-class, invented by Umino Takemoto, also known as Dragon-san IX (deceased). Under the list of known users, only three names appeared. Satisfied that Umino had performed the jutsu as he had said, Kakashi left the archives. On the way out, he crossed paths with Izumo, Kotetsu, and Shizune walking together to the canteen. As they walked away he heard their voices lower to excited whispers. Kakashi paused to listen.
“-Can believe he managed to pull that off,” Kotetsu was saying to the other two.
“Tsunade-sama’s very worried. He was her student, before-well, you know. Anyway, she chewed him out for an hour straight, saying how stupid he was for trying to do something that required so much chakra.” Shizune added.
“Well, what else should he’ve done? Let all those kids die?” Kotetsu demanded. Izumo shushed him with a hand motion.
“Heard Hatake Kakashi is heading up the investigation. And Iruka’s supposed to help him out.”
“Poor bastard,” Kotetsu murmured reverently.
“Which one?” asked Shizune, causing the three of them to dissolve into laughter.
Kakashi scowled as the gossips moved on to a new topic. As he walked in the opposite direction, whistling to himself and pretending to read, he mulled over the new information. Nearing the next place on his list, Kakashi forced himself to forget Umino’s past and consider the mission. He made a mental list of all the facts and organized them neatly, then considered the importance and implications of each one. From the dusty corners of his mind, Kakashi called forth any memories of Hatori he had. Outside of ANBU, the two had never met. Because of their relative ages they had worked together very little before Kakashi quit the shadow organization. The man’s file was squeaky clean, but then all the Anbu’s records were censored to hell and back before going to the locked ANBU archives. Only the hokage at the time knew the details of any given mission, and most of the Rooster’s missions had occurred under the Third. From the one or two assignments they had gone on together, nothing about the man stood out in Kakashi’s mind. Anbu were trained to be unremarkable, after all.
Kakashi sighed in frustration and pocketed the book as he came to a stop in front of a plain apartment building. Like the man it had formerly housed, the building was unremarkable: neither ugly nor pretty, upscale nor run down. Just a building.
According to the file in Kakashi’s pocket, the guy lived on the fourth floor - or, he had before Umino turned him into soup. The apartment - 41b - held no personal affects and less personality. It was not ‘decorated’ so much as ‘furnished cheaply’ with pieces that had probably come with the place. The only thing that made the apartment look lived in was the desk: papers hid the surface and there were thick red books piled all round the outer perimeter. One of these books lay open, along with an uncapped bottle of ink and a dirty paintbrush. Without touching anything Kakashi leaned over the desk and tried to decipher the writing.
It turned out to be either in code or a foreign language; Kakashi could read none of it, though he could see the writer’s obvious distress as he wrote it. The entry ended with a long black line, and the pen nested at the end of it as though it had been thrown down the moment the scribe had finished.
After a quick but thorough search of the rest of the apartment - which turned up nothing except some rather disturbing porn - Kakashi gingerly removed the pen from the journal and started packing the red books in a box he found in the bedroom’s near-empty closet. After he had them all, he teleported straight to the Hokage’s office with the books and sat down in the floor to work.
Half an hour later, he had made no progress with the codes and was growing bored. Sometime while he had been absorbed in checking the code against all of Tsunade’s manuals, TonTon had wandered in and was giving him a pitiful look. Kakashi stared for a moment and then made shooing motions. The pig grunted at him and trotted away - to jump in her owner’s arms with a squeal of delight.
“The hell are you doing in my office, Hatake?” Tsunade demanded, scratching her pig between the ears.
“Ah, you see, the road to happiness and personal enlightenment happens to run-“
“Stow it, brat. What’ve you got?” Kakashi scowled, displeased with the interruption of his outrageous excuse, but held up one of the journals and waved it in the air like a flag. Tsunade snatched it and flipped through the pages with an unimpressed look.
“They’re from Hitoshi’s apartment?” The hokage asked. Kakashi nodded his confirmation, though he was unsure if she could see him since she never looked up.
“I can’t read this, but you can bet he wouldn’t put his grocery list on in an obscure code. Lucky for you, your partner specializes in code breaking.”
“My partner?” Kakashi sputtered. Tsunade rolled her eyes and smacked the leather journal on his head.
“Iruka-sensei has spent the past eight years studying obscure codes, and I don’t just mean pre-genin’s handwriting. He invented our B-class code and improved the A-class,” she snapped. Kakashi guessed her offence stemmed from his underestimating her former student, though why an academic had studied under the most physically powerful Sannin he didn’t know.
“Hn. I’ll bring this to him,”
“Do you know where he lives? He was discharged this morning.” Kakashi shook his head and Tsunade sighed, scribbling an address on a scrap of paper from her desk.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah. Thank me after you dump a huge workload on a cranky Iruka.” She smirked as she eased down into her desk chair. He scowled at her before snatching the paper from her outstretched hand and marching out.
A few minutes late, Kakashi found himself wandering around a neighborhood which proved much nicer than he expected. Instead of the apartments where most of Konoha’s singles lived, Umino occupied one of the homes for families nestled in the outer edges of the village and surrounded with lush trees. Kakashi stared at the house that belonged to the address over his book with a puzzled expression. As far as the jounin knew, Iruka was not married and did not seem like the type to father children out of wedlock. Why would a single man like Umino need a house? And how could he possibly afford it?
As he made his way to the door, Kakashi observed that the grass had grown a little too long and the leaves needed raking. In one corner of the yard lay a well-tended vegetable garden, and near the door stood several scorched lawn ornaments. Kakashi snorted and wondered if they were Naruto’s work. He was still pondering it while he tapped on the door and slouched awkwardly waiting to gain admittance. Given how angry Umino had seemed the night before, Kakashi wondered how the Chunin would react to the intrusion. If Team Seven’s enthusiastic academy horror stories proved accurate, non-lethal weapons would be throne and there would be yelling - lots of yelling. Nothing Kakashi couldn’t handle, but he prepared himself for unpleasantness and a quick escape.
He did not prepare for Umino to answer the door sweaty and wearing only a pair of low-strung track pants. The sight stunned him for a moment and he stared: a network of scars covered the chunin’s visible flesh, stretching over his muscles. Kakashi wondered if they all came from the same time as the one on Iruka’s face. If Iruka noticed Kakashi’s stare, he did not point it out. Instead he looked at the box of books in the jounin’s arms with a raised eyebrow and an expectant look.
“Kakashi-sensei…? Is there anything I can do for you?” Iruka asked, his voice dancing between puzzlement and weariness. Kakashi looked up through his one half-closed eye and showed no sign of surprise as Iruka’s words jerked him out of his observation. The eye curved into Kakashi’s version of a smile.
“Well, you see, the Hokage was worried you would get bored, so she asked me to bring you a little light reading-“ Iruka looked distinctly unimpressed.
“Please tell me that’s not porn,” he said with a sigh as he pulled one book out of the box and flipped through it. At first his dark eyes were uninterested, but he perked up as soon as he realized the journals were neither porn nor prank.
“I can’t guarantee it’s not porn written in code. Aren’t you going to invite me inside, Iruka-sensei?” Without reacting to the taunt at all, Iruka stepped aside and waved vaguely without looking up. Kakashi took this as an invitation and walked in past Iruka. The Chunin - still not looking up from the coded book - shut the door with his bare foot and padded deeper into the interior of the traditionally decorated foyer. As he followed him, Kakashi observed several pictures of a young couple with baby Iruka and realized that the house must have belonged to Iruka’s parents before they died; he had made a home with ghosts, just as Sasuke had. As they walked past the door to a dusty formal living room, Iruka looked over his shoulder and saw Kakashi studying his surroundings with interest.
“It’s a little big for one person, but it never sold and I moved back here after I made Chunin and left the orphan dorms,” Iruka explained, his voice light and still half-absorbed in the code.
“Hn,” mumbled Kakashi, unsure of what to say but not rude enough to remain silent. While they talked they walked past a more lived-in kitchen - a coffee mug rested on the counter and a few dishes in the sink - before turning into an office. Iruka dumped the coded journal onto a paper-covered desk and began grabbing books from the shelves that lined three of the room’s four walls. Rather than watch Umino, Kakashi again took the opportunity to observe his surroundings. The books on the shelves - organized by title - ranged a huge variety of subjects: teaching, cryptography, psychology, interrogation, taijutsu, and one entire wall of fiction.
Photos, drawings, and letters papered the remaining wall. Dozens of young ninja smiled brightly back at Kakashi, including a certain obnoxious blond in almost every shot. Kakashi hoped none of Iruka’s other students ever came in this office, because his favoritism of Naruto showed here. Besides Naruto’s many photographs, most of the papers on the wall proved to be rare ‘A+’ assignments from his academy days and letters scribbled hastily when Naruto and Jiriaya came across a ninja heading back to Konoha. Though Kakashi himself had dozens of similar letters, he had shoved them all in a drawer and forgotten about them after one or two readings. Naruto wrote much more personal things to Iruka, too; Kakashi’s eyes lingered long enough to read a note detailing Naruto’s attempts to woo a girl with displays of his strength in water counter. Of course, because he was Naruto, the attempt failed … Kakashi smiled, then frowned, wondering why none of his students confided anything personal in him like they did Iruka.
“Kakashi-sensei?” Kakashi started, though the twitch was so small no one but a ninja would see it. He realized Iruka had been speaking to him and tried to recall what the man had said.
“Sorry, Iruka-sensei. What did you say?” The man’s brown eyes flashed in annoyance and Umino glowered a moment before deflating and repeating himself.
“I said==” and his tone made Iruka’s displeasure very clear- “that this looks like a completely original code. It will be a few days before I can get all these translated, since I have to crack it and then make my own cipher…”
“Oh.” Kakashi stood still for a moment, wondering what exactly to do in the meanwhile, and Umino continued to give him a look that, while not a glare, still managed to convey a distinct unfriendliness.
“Let me know when you get it translated,” The jounin ordered stiffly, and teleported away.
***
Iruka scowled and coughed at the flashy smoke left behind by the great copy-nine. He despised show offs; that nearly everyone in the village admired Hatake only made him angrier. Had a fresh new puzzle not waited in front of him, he might have gone and found Izumo, Kotetsu, Shizune, or Anko to bitch. Instead Iruka huffed and turned back to the journal.
An hour later, he had a sheet of doodles and fragments of writing. Realizing exactly how difficult his task would be, Iruka sent a short message to the academy and then went to the market. After buying enough food to last a week, Iruka returned to his house and settled down.
Four days and six hours of sleep later, Iruka had managed to translate only one of the journals. The code went beyond complex; Iruka itched to adapt it for ANBU use except he had in idea how to teach it. He barely understood it himself. Even for Iruka, one of Konoha’s foremost cryptographers, each line took over an hour to translate.
The contents of the journal only magnified his frustration. On hour one hundred and four, Iruka grabbed the book and lobbed it across the room before stomping onto his desk, laying his forehead over the papers. While it was neither a grocery list nor pornography, the details written in the red book were prosaic enough that they might as well be. Page after page detailed the going-ons in the orphan dorms, including profiles of each child, notes on the regular volunteers - even a daily copy of the canteen’s menu!
When he realized his translation sheet had stuck to his forehead, Iruka groaned and stood. His muscles protested and he stumbled, nearly collapsing but catching himself on his desk at the last minute. After his legs readjusted to standing he pushed himself off and paced around the room. Unconscious of what he was doing, Iruka reverted back to the problem-solving mode he had developed during his genin days under Tsunade.
“Okay. One: Anbu, no history of psychotic tendencies. Or, no more psychotic than most Anbu,” Iruka said aloud, and the words echoed around the room. “Two, attacks a room full of toddlers without provocation. Three, keeps detailed notes on every orphan between thirteen and fifteen who lives in the orphanage.”
The Chunin growled, pausing in his pacing to stare at the wall where he had taped photos of his students. As usual, one in particular caught his eye and Iruka reached a finger out to trace a close-up shot. A smile tugged his lips and coved the scar across his nose as the teacher wondered what his former student was learning now. The boy would be turning fourteen soon, Iruka knew, and wondered if he would see him--
Something snapped in Iruka’s mind. Fourteen. He nearly tripped over his own feet in his rush to grab his translation from the desk. For a too-long second he fumbled through the papers, confirming something on each before moving to the next.
All the information on the orphans between thirteen and fifteen. Someone - the Rooster - wanted to find Naruto. No, not Naruto, Iruka mentally corrected - they wanted Kyuubi. A demon vessel could only be formed when a child was very young, usually as a baby - or, in Gaara of the Sand’s case, in the womb. Iruka’s eyebrows folded in confusion as his mind worked double-time. His fingers beat a tattoo on the desktop as his mind flew.
“Looking for Kyuubi,” he mumbled to himself, sitting down and leaning his head back against the seat of the desk chair. “Let’s assume that’s right. Every adult in Konoha knows its Naruto. Anyone who had half-decent information networks knows it’s Naruto. Who didn’t have good intelligence at the time?” The answer came easily to Iruka, and it made his stomach clench. If he were right, international relations were about to get very sticky. Iruka left the desk chairs pinning as he ran from the room and dashed through the hallways to the door. He almost ran out without his shoes but stopped for too-long seconds to pull them on and then jumped the stairs from his door to the ground. Dirt flew up from his feet as they pounded the ground through his yard and then sped up once the rubber soles of his sandals hit pavement.
Mid-way to the Hokage’s mansion, Iruka jerked to a stop in the street. Something felt off in a way only a shiobi could sense, a hair-raising wrongness that sent him into a defensive crouch. The route between his house and the Hokage’s ran straight through a section of Konoha severely damaged by the attack during the Chunin exams. No one had yet bothered to rebuild it, so the entire neighborhood lay silent and dark. Now Iruka stood in the middle of an empty street feeling like a movie character as his sharp eyes caught movement through the window of an abandoned storefront.
His reflexes propelled Iruka to a rooftop before the enemy’s shuriken left his hand and by the time the blade embedded in the wood he was street roofs down. Dark shadows spilled from the storefront, and then Iruka had company on his roof. Three of them, in his line of sight, and he guessed at least two more behind him. Every instinct told him to run, or teleport away, but one was impossible and the other was sure to get him killed.
One of the ninja behind him shifted and Iruka spun around, bringing his hands up to cover his face. An amateur’s defense, but it as all he had right now with his decimated chakra reserves When an attack did not come, he lowered his hands to stare wearily at the spot in the shadows where he thought the movement had come from. The darkness changed texture as the figure hiding there stepped forward; as soon as the meager moonlight caught on the ninja’s face, all the air flew from Iruka’s lungs and raw panic seized him. Unlike when the Anbu attacked the nursery, or when Mitzuki tried to kill Naruto, this panic held Iruka in place. His muscles tensed until he could hear his teeth grinding together and his shoulder shook. Iruka squeezed his eyes shut.
The ninja - wearing scratched stone headbands - smirked sharp, tight little smiles as they stepped forward. The man who had been hiding in the shadows clamped a hand on Iruka’s shoulder just as the Chunin found the courage to flee.
“Hello, Iruka-kun,” he whispered. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
Next Chapter
Author: lilpocketninja / pocketnin / creamsoda
Rating: R
Warnings: Gore and the aftermath there of (CSI-level stuff); language; more plot than romance.
Pairings: Kakashi/Iruka (eventually)
Notes: I'm playing kind of fast and loose with the pre-manga timeline here, but then so does Kishimoto. ^^
***
***
Now that he knew where to find the records of the jutsu, Kakashi again visited the records archives. Reading the scroll only confirmed what he knew. The Jutsu was A-class, invented by Umino Takemoto, also known as Dragon-san IX (deceased). Under the list of known users, only three names appeared. Satisfied that Umino had performed the jutsu as he had said, Kakashi left the archives. On the way out, he crossed paths with Izumo, Kotetsu, and Shizune walking together to the canteen. As they walked away he heard their voices lower to excited whispers. Kakashi paused to listen.
“-Can believe he managed to pull that off,” Kotetsu was saying to the other two.
“Tsunade-sama’s very worried. He was her student, before-well, you know. Anyway, she chewed him out for an hour straight, saying how stupid he was for trying to do something that required so much chakra.” Shizune added.
“Well, what else should he’ve done? Let all those kids die?” Kotetsu demanded. Izumo shushed him with a hand motion.
“Heard Hatake Kakashi is heading up the investigation. And Iruka’s supposed to help him out.”
“Poor bastard,” Kotetsu murmured reverently.
“Which one?” asked Shizune, causing the three of them to dissolve into laughter.
Kakashi scowled as the gossips moved on to a new topic. As he walked in the opposite direction, whistling to himself and pretending to read, he mulled over the new information. Nearing the next place on his list, Kakashi forced himself to forget Umino’s past and consider the mission. He made a mental list of all the facts and organized them neatly, then considered the importance and implications of each one. From the dusty corners of his mind, Kakashi called forth any memories of Hatori he had. Outside of ANBU, the two had never met. Because of their relative ages they had worked together very little before Kakashi quit the shadow organization. The man’s file was squeaky clean, but then all the Anbu’s records were censored to hell and back before going to the locked ANBU archives. Only the hokage at the time knew the details of any given mission, and most of the Rooster’s missions had occurred under the Third. From the one or two assignments they had gone on together, nothing about the man stood out in Kakashi’s mind. Anbu were trained to be unremarkable, after all.
Kakashi sighed in frustration and pocketed the book as he came to a stop in front of a plain apartment building. Like the man it had formerly housed, the building was unremarkable: neither ugly nor pretty, upscale nor run down. Just a building.
According to the file in Kakashi’s pocket, the guy lived on the fourth floor - or, he had before Umino turned him into soup. The apartment - 41b - held no personal affects and less personality. It was not ‘decorated’ so much as ‘furnished cheaply’ with pieces that had probably come with the place. The only thing that made the apartment look lived in was the desk: papers hid the surface and there were thick red books piled all round the outer perimeter. One of these books lay open, along with an uncapped bottle of ink and a dirty paintbrush. Without touching anything Kakashi leaned over the desk and tried to decipher the writing.
It turned out to be either in code or a foreign language; Kakashi could read none of it, though he could see the writer’s obvious distress as he wrote it. The entry ended with a long black line, and the pen nested at the end of it as though it had been thrown down the moment the scribe had finished.
After a quick but thorough search of the rest of the apartment - which turned up nothing except some rather disturbing porn - Kakashi gingerly removed the pen from the journal and started packing the red books in a box he found in the bedroom’s near-empty closet. After he had them all, he teleported straight to the Hokage’s office with the books and sat down in the floor to work.
Half an hour later, he had made no progress with the codes and was growing bored. Sometime while he had been absorbed in checking the code against all of Tsunade’s manuals, TonTon had wandered in and was giving him a pitiful look. Kakashi stared for a moment and then made shooing motions. The pig grunted at him and trotted away - to jump in her owner’s arms with a squeal of delight.
“The hell are you doing in my office, Hatake?” Tsunade demanded, scratching her pig between the ears.
“Ah, you see, the road to happiness and personal enlightenment happens to run-“
“Stow it, brat. What’ve you got?” Kakashi scowled, displeased with the interruption of his outrageous excuse, but held up one of the journals and waved it in the air like a flag. Tsunade snatched it and flipped through the pages with an unimpressed look.
“They’re from Hitoshi’s apartment?” The hokage asked. Kakashi nodded his confirmation, though he was unsure if she could see him since she never looked up.
“I can’t read this, but you can bet he wouldn’t put his grocery list on in an obscure code. Lucky for you, your partner specializes in code breaking.”
“My partner?” Kakashi sputtered. Tsunade rolled her eyes and smacked the leather journal on his head.
“Iruka-sensei has spent the past eight years studying obscure codes, and I don’t just mean pre-genin’s handwriting. He invented our B-class code and improved the A-class,” she snapped. Kakashi guessed her offence stemmed from his underestimating her former student, though why an academic had studied under the most physically powerful Sannin he didn’t know.
“Hn. I’ll bring this to him,”
“Do you know where he lives? He was discharged this morning.” Kakashi shook his head and Tsunade sighed, scribbling an address on a scrap of paper from her desk.
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah. Thank me after you dump a huge workload on a cranky Iruka.” She smirked as she eased down into her desk chair. He scowled at her before snatching the paper from her outstretched hand and marching out.
A few minutes late, Kakashi found himself wandering around a neighborhood which proved much nicer than he expected. Instead of the apartments where most of Konoha’s singles lived, Umino occupied one of the homes for families nestled in the outer edges of the village and surrounded with lush trees. Kakashi stared at the house that belonged to the address over his book with a puzzled expression. As far as the jounin knew, Iruka was not married and did not seem like the type to father children out of wedlock. Why would a single man like Umino need a house? And how could he possibly afford it?
As he made his way to the door, Kakashi observed that the grass had grown a little too long and the leaves needed raking. In one corner of the yard lay a well-tended vegetable garden, and near the door stood several scorched lawn ornaments. Kakashi snorted and wondered if they were Naruto’s work. He was still pondering it while he tapped on the door and slouched awkwardly waiting to gain admittance. Given how angry Umino had seemed the night before, Kakashi wondered how the Chunin would react to the intrusion. If Team Seven’s enthusiastic academy horror stories proved accurate, non-lethal weapons would be throne and there would be yelling - lots of yelling. Nothing Kakashi couldn’t handle, but he prepared himself for unpleasantness and a quick escape.
He did not prepare for Umino to answer the door sweaty and wearing only a pair of low-strung track pants. The sight stunned him for a moment and he stared: a network of scars covered the chunin’s visible flesh, stretching over his muscles. Kakashi wondered if they all came from the same time as the one on Iruka’s face. If Iruka noticed Kakashi’s stare, he did not point it out. Instead he looked at the box of books in the jounin’s arms with a raised eyebrow and an expectant look.
“Kakashi-sensei…? Is there anything I can do for you?” Iruka asked, his voice dancing between puzzlement and weariness. Kakashi looked up through his one half-closed eye and showed no sign of surprise as Iruka’s words jerked him out of his observation. The eye curved into Kakashi’s version of a smile.
“Well, you see, the Hokage was worried you would get bored, so she asked me to bring you a little light reading-“ Iruka looked distinctly unimpressed.
“Please tell me that’s not porn,” he said with a sigh as he pulled one book out of the box and flipped through it. At first his dark eyes were uninterested, but he perked up as soon as he realized the journals were neither porn nor prank.
“I can’t guarantee it’s not porn written in code. Aren’t you going to invite me inside, Iruka-sensei?” Without reacting to the taunt at all, Iruka stepped aside and waved vaguely without looking up. Kakashi took this as an invitation and walked in past Iruka. The Chunin - still not looking up from the coded book - shut the door with his bare foot and padded deeper into the interior of the traditionally decorated foyer. As he followed him, Kakashi observed several pictures of a young couple with baby Iruka and realized that the house must have belonged to Iruka’s parents before they died; he had made a home with ghosts, just as Sasuke had. As they walked past the door to a dusty formal living room, Iruka looked over his shoulder and saw Kakashi studying his surroundings with interest.
“It’s a little big for one person, but it never sold and I moved back here after I made Chunin and left the orphan dorms,” Iruka explained, his voice light and still half-absorbed in the code.
“Hn,” mumbled Kakashi, unsure of what to say but not rude enough to remain silent. While they talked they walked past a more lived-in kitchen - a coffee mug rested on the counter and a few dishes in the sink - before turning into an office. Iruka dumped the coded journal onto a paper-covered desk and began grabbing books from the shelves that lined three of the room’s four walls. Rather than watch Umino, Kakashi again took the opportunity to observe his surroundings. The books on the shelves - organized by title - ranged a huge variety of subjects: teaching, cryptography, psychology, interrogation, taijutsu, and one entire wall of fiction.
Photos, drawings, and letters papered the remaining wall. Dozens of young ninja smiled brightly back at Kakashi, including a certain obnoxious blond in almost every shot. Kakashi hoped none of Iruka’s other students ever came in this office, because his favoritism of Naruto showed here. Besides Naruto’s many photographs, most of the papers on the wall proved to be rare ‘A+’ assignments from his academy days and letters scribbled hastily when Naruto and Jiriaya came across a ninja heading back to Konoha. Though Kakashi himself had dozens of similar letters, he had shoved them all in a drawer and forgotten about them after one or two readings. Naruto wrote much more personal things to Iruka, too; Kakashi’s eyes lingered long enough to read a note detailing Naruto’s attempts to woo a girl with displays of his strength in water counter. Of course, because he was Naruto, the attempt failed … Kakashi smiled, then frowned, wondering why none of his students confided anything personal in him like they did Iruka.
“Kakashi-sensei?” Kakashi started, though the twitch was so small no one but a ninja would see it. He realized Iruka had been speaking to him and tried to recall what the man had said.
“Sorry, Iruka-sensei. What did you say?” The man’s brown eyes flashed in annoyance and Umino glowered a moment before deflating and repeating himself.
“I said==” and his tone made Iruka’s displeasure very clear- “that this looks like a completely original code. It will be a few days before I can get all these translated, since I have to crack it and then make my own cipher…”
“Oh.” Kakashi stood still for a moment, wondering what exactly to do in the meanwhile, and Umino continued to give him a look that, while not a glare, still managed to convey a distinct unfriendliness.
“Let me know when you get it translated,” The jounin ordered stiffly, and teleported away.
***
Iruka scowled and coughed at the flashy smoke left behind by the great copy-nine. He despised show offs; that nearly everyone in the village admired Hatake only made him angrier. Had a fresh new puzzle not waited in front of him, he might have gone and found Izumo, Kotetsu, Shizune, or Anko to bitch. Instead Iruka huffed and turned back to the journal.
An hour later, he had a sheet of doodles and fragments of writing. Realizing exactly how difficult his task would be, Iruka sent a short message to the academy and then went to the market. After buying enough food to last a week, Iruka returned to his house and settled down.
Four days and six hours of sleep later, Iruka had managed to translate only one of the journals. The code went beyond complex; Iruka itched to adapt it for ANBU use except he had in idea how to teach it. He barely understood it himself. Even for Iruka, one of Konoha’s foremost cryptographers, each line took over an hour to translate.
The contents of the journal only magnified his frustration. On hour one hundred and four, Iruka grabbed the book and lobbed it across the room before stomping onto his desk, laying his forehead over the papers. While it was neither a grocery list nor pornography, the details written in the red book were prosaic enough that they might as well be. Page after page detailed the going-ons in the orphan dorms, including profiles of each child, notes on the regular volunteers - even a daily copy of the canteen’s menu!
When he realized his translation sheet had stuck to his forehead, Iruka groaned and stood. His muscles protested and he stumbled, nearly collapsing but catching himself on his desk at the last minute. After his legs readjusted to standing he pushed himself off and paced around the room. Unconscious of what he was doing, Iruka reverted back to the problem-solving mode he had developed during his genin days under Tsunade.
“Okay. One: Anbu, no history of psychotic tendencies. Or, no more psychotic than most Anbu,” Iruka said aloud, and the words echoed around the room. “Two, attacks a room full of toddlers without provocation. Three, keeps detailed notes on every orphan between thirteen and fifteen who lives in the orphanage.”
The Chunin growled, pausing in his pacing to stare at the wall where he had taped photos of his students. As usual, one in particular caught his eye and Iruka reached a finger out to trace a close-up shot. A smile tugged his lips and coved the scar across his nose as the teacher wondered what his former student was learning now. The boy would be turning fourteen soon, Iruka knew, and wondered if he would see him--
Something snapped in Iruka’s mind. Fourteen. He nearly tripped over his own feet in his rush to grab his translation from the desk. For a too-long second he fumbled through the papers, confirming something on each before moving to the next.
All the information on the orphans between thirteen and fifteen. Someone - the Rooster - wanted to find Naruto. No, not Naruto, Iruka mentally corrected - they wanted Kyuubi. A demon vessel could only be formed when a child was very young, usually as a baby - or, in Gaara of the Sand’s case, in the womb. Iruka’s eyebrows folded in confusion as his mind worked double-time. His fingers beat a tattoo on the desktop as his mind flew.
“Looking for Kyuubi,” he mumbled to himself, sitting down and leaning his head back against the seat of the desk chair. “Let’s assume that’s right. Every adult in Konoha knows its Naruto. Anyone who had half-decent information networks knows it’s Naruto. Who didn’t have good intelligence at the time?” The answer came easily to Iruka, and it made his stomach clench. If he were right, international relations were about to get very sticky. Iruka left the desk chairs pinning as he ran from the room and dashed through the hallways to the door. He almost ran out without his shoes but stopped for too-long seconds to pull them on and then jumped the stairs from his door to the ground. Dirt flew up from his feet as they pounded the ground through his yard and then sped up once the rubber soles of his sandals hit pavement.
Mid-way to the Hokage’s mansion, Iruka jerked to a stop in the street. Something felt off in a way only a shiobi could sense, a hair-raising wrongness that sent him into a defensive crouch. The route between his house and the Hokage’s ran straight through a section of Konoha severely damaged by the attack during the Chunin exams. No one had yet bothered to rebuild it, so the entire neighborhood lay silent and dark. Now Iruka stood in the middle of an empty street feeling like a movie character as his sharp eyes caught movement through the window of an abandoned storefront.
His reflexes propelled Iruka to a rooftop before the enemy’s shuriken left his hand and by the time the blade embedded in the wood he was street roofs down. Dark shadows spilled from the storefront, and then Iruka had company on his roof. Three of them, in his line of sight, and he guessed at least two more behind him. Every instinct told him to run, or teleport away, but one was impossible and the other was sure to get him killed.
One of the ninja behind him shifted and Iruka spun around, bringing his hands up to cover his face. An amateur’s defense, but it as all he had right now with his decimated chakra reserves When an attack did not come, he lowered his hands to stare wearily at the spot in the shadows where he thought the movement had come from. The darkness changed texture as the figure hiding there stepped forward; as soon as the meager moonlight caught on the ninja’s face, all the air flew from Iruka’s lungs and raw panic seized him. Unlike when the Anbu attacked the nursery, or when Mitzuki tried to kill Naruto, this panic held Iruka in place. His muscles tensed until he could hear his teeth grinding together and his shoulder shook. Iruka squeezed his eyes shut.
The ninja - wearing scratched stone headbands - smirked sharp, tight little smiles as they stepped forward. The man who had been hiding in the shadows clamped a hand on Iruka’s shoulder just as the Chunin found the courage to flee.
“Hello, Iruka-kun,” he whispered. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
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