Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I urge you to let us go”

“Us?” he asked.

“Do you take me for a fool?”

He had to say, in his time being a hero and working with villains, this guy was the most perplexing one he ever had the chance of interrogating. He was a big guy - but not as big as some of the villains he had fought, he didn’t even have a mutation quirk, he was just built like a rock, but other than that, pretty normal - except for the eye he refused to open; if they hadn’t injected him with a quirk suppressant, he would have been more worried.

He was still dressed in the outfit they found him in - minus a headband and a dark mask that was connected to his shirt that they had pulled down. It looked like a military outfit, standard issue. They didn’t have the chance to change him out. It was a security hazard, definitely, yet the most they could do was ensure that he wasn’t carrying anything on him. The things they found on him took 5 evidence boxes to hold, things from rations to medical supplies, to weapons sharper than almost all of the weapons found in japan. 

His main goal was to extract information from the man. Find out who he was, where he was from, why he was here and any details about the children they could get out of his mouth.

Aizawa pushed down the urge to look away from his piercing gaze, “Who is us?”

It was a pointless question to ask. The villain knew, and he knew who the ‘us’ was. But there was no way in hell he would admit that he knew where the children were, because if the man had any connections to the outside world it may as well have been a death sentence to those kids.

The man relaxed suddenly and leaned against the back of his chair, Aizawa let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. He was completely open, his hands were bound together on the table and his legs were shackled with tungsten chains. 

The man tilted his head slightly to the right and kept his single eye on Aizawa’s.

 His voice was barely audible, just slightly above a whisper.

“My shinobi”

Shinobi. Fucking Shinobi, if he wasn’t under direct watch by the police right now, he would have long landed a punch on this guy’s jaw. Those kids, younger than the kids he was teaching, this guy called them his ninjas. His. As if those kids belonged to him. He dug crescent-shaped dents into his palms.

They had indeed taken in ‘his shinobi’ whatever that meant. They had been found passed out on top of the man, who was also unconscious, bruised and bleeding.

They were tiny compared to him, Aizawa had been the closest hero there and the first on the scene, before even the police when they arrived. There were three of them, two boys and a girl, they looked too injured for normal kids. Their muscles were far more developed than even first-year UA students, scars littered what visible patches of skin they had. The children reeked of iron and sweat, their hair was matted for what he could only assume was weeks without showering.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, we aren't holding any ninja captive”

That was the truth, they weren't holding those children. The three of them were recovering at UA’s dorms after they had been tended to and cleaned of course. 

Preferably they would’ve been kept at a normal hospital where they could get an abundance of medical procedures done without much fuss, but the circumstances prevented that from happening. You see, despite having restrained and injected the man in front of him with a variety of drugs and suppressants, they couldn’t risk having him escape and take the children away from a completely unguarded hospital. 

This was mainly due to the fact that the drugs they had given the man didn’t seem to be working at all. His quirk was disabled, Aizawa’s presence here made sure of that, but the man seemed to be immune to everything else that they had given him. Such as the narcotic given to him to make sure he didn’t wake up before being secured in the interrogation room. Of course, seeing as how he was still awake and asking for his shinobi, the drug didn’t work.

The man smiled, it was warm yet he couldn’t help the shiver that ran through his spine. 

His voice was but a shallow rasp against the silence of the room, “When I get to them - and trust me I will get to them”

He sat up a leaned forward, his face barely 20 centimeters away from Aizawa’s,  “There better not be a single limb missing from their bodies” 

He was disgusted at the implication that they would ever even think of laying a finger on children, let alone amputating their limbs. Just where and who was this guy? 

Why did he even care about the kids…unless? The thought disgusted him to the core, he felt the burning desire to take a cold shower and rub his skin off any remnants of the man sitting in front of him. He didn’t care about those kids, did he? He called them his soldiers, it was only natural for him to not want his soldiers damaged. He was repulsed at the thought of those tiny kids going through the type of training it must’ve taken for them to get to such a level of physical fitness.

The man continued, “It’s been quite some time since I’ve tortured someone, but you can be confident in the fact that I will not let any impudence against my shinobi slide”

“Are you threatening me?”

The audacity this bastard had to pretend to care for those children made his blood boil. 

He smiled, the scar cutting through his closed eye wrinkled, “If I was threatening you, you would know. I’m simply informing you of what is to come”

The smile on his face dropped, and his eyes exuded rancour.

Aizawa had had enough of this guy, he stood up, the metal chair dragging against the tiled floor. He left the room, the heavy door slamming behind him. He wanted to see those children, his mind was too occupied with them to bother listening to the man’s lies.

Outside, watching through a one-way mirror was detective Naomasa Tsukauchi. His brows were furrowed and his mouth was twisted into a frown. Aizawa walked to him, he needed to tell him where he was going. 

Unfortunately, when he reached the window, it took a while for the words to get out of his mouth. Just a fraction of a second after he made his way in front of the window, the man was gone. Tsukauchi and he froze, he was gone.

He was gone.

Fuck .

He had been bound to the table and the floor with heavy shackles pumped full of disorientating narcotics and tied to the chair he had been sitting on. The door was triple-reinforced steel, the only way to get out was via a biometric scan and a chip embedded in one’s wrist. There were no windows to the outside, the walls were made of meter-thick concrete and the only air vents situated in the room were 4 meters above where the man had been sitting. Even then the air vents had seals over them to make sure nothing could get out. This prison was the depths of hell for criminals, and the man simply disappeared, leaving a pile of leaves where he had been.

The man had escaped Tartarus.

In a matter of two minutes and 45 seconds, the entirety of Tartarus was aware of the man who escaped hell. Prison guards were on the lookout, prisoners were on the verge of a riot and the National news was already preparing to go live. 

In less than three minutes, Aizawa made his way out of the prison maze and into his car. To say he sped to UA would be an understatement, he was pushing 150km/h on a busy rainy night. The risk of him dying before even finding the man was starting to get higher with every acceleration.

He would get there. 

He would make it.

________________________________________________

The wheels on his car were on the verge of melting away as he screeched onto the UA compound. The car had barely even stopped moving before he was out and running towards the dorms, where those kids were, hopefully unhurt. 

The rain soaked through his clothes and dripped down his face, he was blinded by it, his skin was cold and pale. Every step he took, he could feel his heart beating faster in his head. When the doors to the dorms opened, his class was there, ready to see him in all of his glory. 

They were all collected in the living room, watching the news that had aired only a few minutes ago. He ignored them, the priority was those kids. 

Despite his ignoring them, his students rioted to follow him, and questions of all sorts popped up. 

“Are you alright?!”

“Mr Aizawa, is it safe?”

“Where are you going?”

He ran to the top level like his life depended on it because really, the kids’ lives did depend on it. There he was met with Nemuri standing outside the door. He assumed that Hizashi was standing inside, protecting those kids. Before she could even glance at him, he pushed her to the side and burst open the door.

The man didn’t look to be in the dorms or even within the vicinity of UA but he couldn’t risk it. He had escaped Tartarus without so much as batting an eyelash. And if his memory served right, the man had promised - rather vehemently at that - that he would find his shinobi.

It took him longer than usual to realise. The room was different from this morning when he was visiting the sleeping children in the afternoon. He felt goosebumps rising against the back of his neck, something was different. There was a lack of…beeping.

It took him about a second to fully realise the missing bodies of those three children weren’t in the room. The windows were wide open and Hizashi wasn’t there. Instantly his mind raced to the possibility that the children had died, that recovery girl couldn’t heal them. And then he felt a hand on his shoulder. He bristled.

“Where are they”

He was scared of what Nemuri might say. 

‘They passed’

‘Someone was sent to kill them’

“We moved them,” she said.

His mind raced through the possibilities. Then he relaxed, of course, they moved them, that was good. There was a villain after them, and certainly not a villain they could afford to underestimate. They probably moved the children to a more secure location, like the main building or training ground C.

He faced Nemuri, but before he could ask where they were she told him of everything that had occurred whilst he was needed at Tartarus.

“They were hostile, Nezu asked you to go suppress their quirks and calm them down when you got back, they’re underground in the main building”

Well, that was unexpected. 

But there was something else, the kids were moved underground, that's where their safe house was. It was likely the second safest place in Japan, the first being Tartarus. The very nature of it being a secure safe house, also meant that it was one of the worst places one could keep panicked children; there were no windows, the walls were scarcely decorated and the entire place smelled stale. Of course, it wasn’t decorated like a prison or anything, but it wasn’t much better was all he was saying.

And for Nezu to want him to suppress their quirks, they must’ve had a reason. Had anyone else told him that they were keeping likely traumatised children in a facility underground with no connection to the outside world and asked him to not only talk to them but suppress their quirks, he would have gone red and beat them to a pulp. But this was Nezu, and he trusted the principal enough to know that he had a reason to do everything.

Nemuri had said they were hostile, but how bad could it have been for them to move the kids underground? He wondered why she didn’t just use her quirk or why they didn’t restrain them. 

“WHAT!?”

A voice from behind him chimed.

It was Kaminari. 

“Nemuri, did you tell my students?”

She avoided his gaze, “I forgot….hahaha”

He turned to face his students, he could look over all their heads, they were so … small compared to him - at least most of them were. Those children, they were bloody when he first laid eyes on them, they were so much smaller than the group standing right in front of him right now. He couldn’t bear to think about what horrors they might have gone through and how stressed they must be right now. 

Every second he was here was a second they were alone.

He pushed past his students.

“Nemuri, explain and brief them”

He didn’t look back.

“Mr Aizawa! Let us follow you”

He didn’t have time for this, this matter was not for his students to worry about.

“Nemuri”

He smelled the familiar sweetness in the air right as he exited the dorms, the loud ruckus slowed to nothing. Before he made it ten steps from the doors, the dorms were engulfed in complete silence. 

______________________________________

Cementos was there. As he walked down the stairs, he realised that the entire structure of the underground was different. It looked more ‘friendly’ he supposed that was the least they could have done for those kids. They had changed the layout to something like an observatory. The stairs that led down were connected to a short hallway. Through that hall was a glass door and through that door was where the kids were.

The room was huge, it was a circular room, with a dome-shaped top. Cementos, Nezu and he were separated from the kids by a single glass pane running straight down the middle of the rotunda - laminated one-way glass he assumed. As he entered the room even he had to admit he was slightly jealous. The room was nicer than any of the dorms in UA, the entire place was painted a deep dark blue and the curved ceiling was dotted with thousands of small lights, making it resemble the night sky. 

It was calming, for kids it would be even more so he guessed. After all, what kid wasn’t infatuated with the idea of space and becoming an astronaut?

He was glad that they had at least put some effort into trying to calm those kids down. On the other side of the glass, the room was decorated with plenty of celestial-like embellishments. There were three beds placed of equal length apart from each other.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. His heart ached at the sight in front of him. The three kids were standing stiff as a board against the wall directly opposite them. The two boys looked to be protecting the girl. It hurt him to think of what they were trying to protect her from.

They looked terrified. 

He looked to Nezu, “Let me in”

“Change before you go in”, Nezu pointed to a pile of dry clothes and towels at the side.

The principal paused, “There’s something about them, Aizawa, we’ll come in if there’s any trouble”

He changed quickly in the corner of the room, drying off with the towel along the way, and left the wet clothes on the floor. When he was done Nezu only gestured to a door on the right. Before he went in, he warned him.

“Don’t take your eyes off them, make sure you have your quirk on at all times, and Aizawa, be careful”

Aizawa trusted Nezu more than he trusted anyone else to give him orders, before he even went through the door, his eyes bled red and his hair floated up. The moment he entered, the children moved with incredible speed from the middle of the room to the side furthest from him, their backs still against the wall. 

He put his hands up as a peaceful gesture, he needed to approach them without scaring them off. He got about halfway there before the blonde boy spoke.

“Don’t come any closer! I’m warning you!”

It wasn’t the first time he had seen the boy, but now he could observe him more closely. His blonde hair was more of a bright yellow than blonde and his eyes were a clear blue. Having both was quite uncommon in Japan, even after the first quirks manifested. He was probably foreign. If Aizawa had to guess, he likely had a mutation-based quirk as well, there were three whisker-like marks on his cheeks. 

He stayed where he was, to move closer and break the boundaries set by the boy was probably the worst thing he could do for building trust between them right now.

He tried to make his figure smaller, “I just want to know your names, I’m not going to hurt you”

The black-haired boy whispered to the other two and he saw their eyes go wide before they nodded, and returned to ‘normal’. That made him up his guard. What were they whispering about? There were only two possibilities, they were discussing how to escape or they were discussing him. To be analysed right in front of your face was generally not something he was comfortable with.

The boy stepped in front of the other two, “Which village are you from?”

Village? That was an interesting choice of words. Coming from a village was getting rarer and rarer every year, what with everyone starting to move to the big cities and overseas. 

He hesitated in answering, “Tokyo…what about you?”

The boy moved back to his friends, keeping his eyes on him before whispering to them again and stopping soon after. The girl now looked to be doing most of the conversation, she stood by his left while the blonde stood to his right, listening to what the girl had to say. He didn’t like this. Those kids had enough sense to mask their lips while they spoke, not that he could read lips much better than at a basic level. The girl tilted her head so that her hair fell over her face while she spoke, the other two just listened intently.

“Do you take us for fools?” The girl broke the silence.

His heartbeat quickened, that was almost exactly the same words that the man had said. What did they mean? He was from Tokyo. Were they asking the exact village his family was from? He didn’t know which village he was from, he was born and raised in the heart of Tokyo.

All of a sudden the blonde rushed forward in front of his friend and started yelling. “HEY OLD MAN, YOU BETTER LET US GO, OR I’LL BEAT YOU UP, DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO I AM?”

Did he agitate him somehow? Aizawa kept silent, he didn’t want to anger the boy anymore than he already was. He let him continue. The boy ran up to him, closer than he thought the blonde would be comfortable with. Aizawa looked down at him and could only think about how young he was and how easily influenced he must’ve been.

“I'M UZUMAKI NA-”

Aizawa’s eyes betrayed his shock. He had gotten a name faster than usual, and he didn’t even have to do anything. Unfortunately, the boy’s friend, the girl, ran up, pulled him back and shut him up before he could say his full name, but the important thing was that they got his family name. He glanced at the reflective glass wall discreetly. Hopefully, Nezu would be able to find the boy’s family soon. 

Before his gaze moved back to them, goosebumps rose along the back of his neck. 

He dropped to the floor on his knees out of instinct, and a flurry of butterflies rose in his stomach up to his throat. Above him, he saw a blinding light race past the exact position his head had been in. The sound was deafening, it sounded like a thousand chirping birds all at once, multiplied by a hundred. His ears rang and his vision was starting to cut in and out. 

Shit.

The first thought he had was that the man had found them, he found them and he was about to deliver on his promise. Aizawa’s back gave out and he laid there, prostrated on the ground, it was comparable to getting hit with a flashbang right in front of your face. It hurt like a bitch. The hairs on his arms raised and his ears rang. 

Shit. 

He was going to die, he needed to get up. But he wasn’t a mutant, nor did he have a quirk to negate the effects of a flashbang-like quirk, it would take him a while to reorient himself. And even he knew, despite being blinded and deaf, that if the man was here that there wouldn’t be any time for him to get up. If he didn’t stand now, he would never stand again.

Before he mustered the strength to stand, he felt small arms under his arms, he was dragged along the floor away from the door and away from where he was almost killed. Were those kids helping him? Unfortunately, of course, that wasn’t the case, shortly before he regained his vision and a bit of his hearing, he felt cold steel against his neck.

He heard the voice beside his ear before realising Nezu and Cementoss rushed into the room.

“Let us go, or he dies”

It was the girl. Her feathery voice now bled resentment and animosity. He tried to move, years of training couldn’t go to waste now when he was being held by a bunch of kids. He tried to move, yet he couldn’t. He was tied up. Every movement he made, the razor-thin string dug deeper into him, threatening to break his skin through the fabric.

His hands were tied behind his back and his legs were wrapped together, if he wasn’t on the verge of death he’d be blushing from the embarrassment of getting taken down by a bunch of kids.

His hearing and eyesight were pretty much completely back by now. He surveyed the room, the black-haired boy was standing to the right closest to the door while the blonde and the girl looked to be behind and beside him respectively.

“Alright, just put the…kunai down”

Kunai? Aizawa spared a glance at the sharp object pressing dangerously close to his skin, it was a kunai. The words of that man came back to him, ‘my shinobi’ , he said. Was this the work of a villain? Was there some greater evil lurking in the shadows?

Thus, in spite of the kunai held to his neck, he couldn’t help but feel compassion and sorrow for these children. How young must they have been to have such proficiency in fighting? Were they scouted like Hawks was? What was their life like before they were taken? Were their families still looking for them?  Most of all, he felt a deep burning hatred towards the villains who took away their childhood to make them soldiers for whatever twisted cause they had.

They were so young, to have their entire lives taken just like that was an evil reserved for only the worse in society.

The girl spoke from behind him, “We’ll let him go when we’re outside”

They moved along the wall, bringing him along with them, Nezu and Cementoss moved as well, constantly keeping themselves opposite them. They moved until the two of them were reunited with the black-haired kid by the door. He marveled at the strength of the girl, she struggled with his weight for sure, but most of his own students couldn’t imagine even being able to move him from his spot.

Aizawa was fully recovered by now. 

The trio were a couple of meters from the door before he initiated his escape. 

He hesitated in escaping mainly because he didn’t want to hurt the girl, but he couldn’t let them leave the room and besides, the girl would be fine. 

A small dagger constantly kept at his side in a small hidden pocket would finally be used. In his many years of hero work, he had never once used it, mostly because he was skilled enough to not get captured. Luckily, this also meant that the knife was still razor sharp and would hopefully easily slice through the string. While the girl dragged him along, he managed to get that dagger in his hands and slice through the strings enough that he would be mobile but not enough to alert his abductors.

Only a few steps from the door was when he stood and flipped her over his shoulder. Unlike how it ended most of the time, however, she didn’t go down as quickly as normal. Instead, rather than falling on her back as most people would, she simply flipped to standing again. She did look disorientated though so at the very least his flipping didn’t go all to waste.

“SAKURA!”

The black-haired boy pulled the blonde back by his jacket while the blonde pulled ‘Sakura’ back by her shirt as well.

“Naruto, Sakura, get behind me!”

The two of them scattered behind the boy. Which was usually not a good sign for anyone in front of the person who everyone got behind. Aizawa rushed to the other side where the principal and Cementoss were.

The boy made signs with his hands, they were so fast that he couldn’t make out what they were.

He held his hands, clasped together in a sign, below his mouth.

Time seemed to stop as the boy’s chest expanded almost unnaturally, his internal instincts were going wild, asking him to run to the door. But he knew better, whatever it was the boy was planning to do, he wouldn’t be able to make it out before he had done it. 

“KATON!”

Cementoss placed his hands on the ground.

“GOUKAKYUU NO JUTSU!”

He caught a glimpse of a blazing inferno right as a concrete wall came up completely blocking whatever quirk the boy had. 

The heat only came a few seconds after the wall was brought up. It cascaded over them like hot lava, he feared that the wall wouldn’t hold, or that even if it did, they would be baked alive, trapped in a large concrete oven. By the time it was over, they were drenched in sweat.

The wall collapsed, and they saw the molten red rock that had become of the outer layer of it. Most importantly, however, was that the kids were currently running out of the room and up the staircase. He could just barely hear their footsteps, which was insane if he truly thought about it. 

Aizawa ran out of the room chasing them down, despite the sound of their footsteps gradually disappearing they were still well within his view. He only caught up to them when they reached the ‘outside’. 

His scarf reached out, they were in an open field, his worst territory. It reached out and it caught the blonde’s ankle. It dragged him down to the floor.

He pulled out another Kunai from god knows where and attempted to cut off his tether, luckily for Aizawa, he couldn’t do it. It didn’t take long for his team to realize their missing person, they turned around with a vigor he could only hope to instill in Bakugo. They faced off there.

The two were staring at him, while the blonde was still on the ground, attempting to wrestle out of the bind. 

“Naruto! ”The girl shouted, the black-haired boy pulled her back from running to help ‘Naruto’.

“IT"S ALRIGHT, SAKURA, I'LL GET OUT!!”

Aizawa highly doubted that. Though he was starting to get nervous with how much the blonde was wiggling about.

It was the boy this time, “Naruto!”

“I KNOW, I KNOW”

*crack*

His eyes snapped back to the boy and away from the two other kids. He heard it, he heard that oh-so-familiar sound, the sound that he had spent countless hours of his life listening to. A dislocation. 

“FUCK!!!! SHIT SHIT SHIT”

Before he could grab the boy and tend to his now dislocated and bleeding ankle, the boy ran to his friends. Or more accurately, hopped on one foot while the other looked grossly mangled. Aizawa’s heart nearly burst out of his chest. What the actual hell, the boy's foot was bleeding and the dislocation looked more like a broken bone. Had the boy exerted too much pressure? It was too bloody for a dislocation.

He reached out, but the boy was moving too fast “WAIT, KID”

If he kept moving like that. The injuries to his foot would be too severe, torn tendons and dislocated ankles were a completely different matter from shattered tarsals and bones, not to mention with the pressure he was placing on them every so often when he needed to regain balance.

He ran up to the boy, he was faster, he would catch up in less than a few seconds. Aizawa’s arm reached out as far as it could, he could almost feel the rough fabric of the boy’s jacket on his fingers.

One more step.

Just a little more.

He reached.

The tips of his fingers graced the dirt and blood-stained collar of the jacket. Just a little bit more.

He leaned forward, ready to tackle the boy or at least stop him. His hands clutched his collar, scrunching up the fabric. He expected the boy to fall backwards into his arms, pulled along by his jacket, but instead, his fingers soon found themselves clutching nothing but thin air.

It was the raven-haired boy. 

He was carrying the blonde on his back, he was faster than him, he couldn’t catch up. Just what quirk did this boy have? Speed and flames? Flames that rivalled the heat of Todoroki’s, and speed almost as fast as Mirko’s? No, it was impossible, the two quirks had no relation to each other whatsoever, there was something else. 

A drop of rain fell below his eye. 

Was this the work of all for one?

Did the boy simply have a copy quirk? Like Monoma’s? 

In front of him, in less than a second, the boy had grabbed his friend and launched him on his back. What was it? Time slowed as his heartbeat quickened. Something scratched at his brain, something important.

.

.

.

His eyes.

Aizawa’s quirk had been activated ever since he entered the room, yet the boy was still able to activate his fire and speed quirk…and his eyes.

The raven-haired boy’s eyes were red. They spun, lighting up like lanterns on the dark and cloudy evening. Even now, with his back turned away from him, he could feel the power emanating from those eyes. It was the same. The same sense of unease, of turmoil….of fear. It was the same as when he was stuck in the room with that man.

The boy, there was something about him too. 

He wasn’t like his friends. 

Yes, that was it. He was different, he felt different. It wasn’t just his eyes, there was an energy lurking around and within him. He didn’t know what it was when he first entered the room he was held in, just chalking it up to his own jitters after confronting that beast of a villain.

He hadn’t felt it again until the boy grabbed Naruto. Until he came so close to Aizawa that the feeling of fear was absolute. The boy had looked at him as he took his friend away. His hair and quirk were still activated, yet the boy looked him straight in the eyes, with those spinning red lanterns. What he saw in those milliseconds of eye contact froze him to the core.

Pure malice and hatred.

It wasn’t the anger of a child when their friend got hurt or when they lost a game. No, it was something worse than that. Not even the villains he had beaten to a pulp had that kind of hatred within them. They were angry, yes but not angry at him, at Aizawa Shota, they were angry at the world.

This boy, the only one of the three whose name has yet to be uttered, was filled with evil.  

Those eyes were too cold, too cold for a child. The only person who he had ever seen with such eyes was the Hero-killer Stain, and yet, the boy’s was different. It wasn’t concentrated on the people and heroes of the world. That resentment was entirely aimed at him with full force, him and only him. Not him as a hero or as a teacher but as a person. 

His legs stopped moving and his knees locked. He was frozen to the spot. 

When the boy reached the girl, the three of them spared a look back at him. Those red eyes drew him back in. Eyes of the devil. He didn’t believe in God or Satan but in those eyes, there was nothing else that could describe them.

He found it hard to find much compassion left in him for the children.

He felt a wind rush past him, then the ground started to wobble underneath him. 

Reinforcements, he suspected. 

The kids won’t step foot outside of UA. It was impossible, at least it was for them. There were still several kilometres left for them to run if they wanted to even have a chance of escaping the school grounds. For children that size and age, impossible, especially since the Raven-haired boy was carrying a weight equivalent to his own, who also happened to be squeezing the life out of his arm in what could only be pain. 

Despite all their skills and prowess. All their quirks and mysteries, they were still children. They were children, and children could not hope to out-think or outrun adults, especially heroes with decades in the field. He wondered what would happen to them after they were sedated again. 

As he gazed upon them, concrete blocks rising to hold their feet in place, as much as he would hope that those emotions of kindness and pity would disappear from his mind after seeing the black-haired boy’s hatred, he couldn’t help the pang of sadness and guilt that overcame him when he looked at them once again.

They were ‘just’ children. They wouldn’t even be out of middle school yet if they had had a normal childhood. Those three were taken from likely the only adult they knew, no matter how disgusting his acts against them were, and placed in an unknown location. HELL the blonde had even seriously injured himself just to get away from him. They were scared. And could he really blame them? 

The black-haired boy was just protecting his friends. 

Even for himself, he was angry, he was so angry that he couldn’t help it when he discovered what had happened to Shirakumo. But he was an adult when he found out, at the very least, he knew how to handle grief. The boy saw his friends terrified and hurt at ‘their’ hands, of course, he was angry. 

The look of panic and fear in their eyes as they tried to escape from the concrete that slowly rose up their bodies, binding even Naruto on the boy’s back almost made him look away. It was cruel. 

The rain got heavier now. He didn’t mind it obstructing his vision.

The sweet scent of flowers and lavender wafted past his face and formed into a small pink cloud around the three children.

They waited for five minutes. Five minutes before midnight pulled the air away and Cementoss’ concrete receded into the muddy ground. The three of them were out cold, so naturally, their bodies dropped to the ground. 

Aizawa was there before a single one of them could fall onto the mud. He held the three of them in his arms, their skin was cold and clammy from the rain. 

“Nemuri!”

He locked eyes with her, “Coming!”

She walked slowly toward him, the danger was over, “Help me carry the bo- Naruto to Recovery girl, careful, his foot is completely shattered”

“Why did you shatter his foot Aizawa? That seems cruel, even for you”

His brows furrowed at the accusation, why would she even think he would do something like that…to villains yes but not to children. He supposed it made sense, no child had the tolerance or even strength to break their own body, even to escape.

“I di-”

His body froze, and a violent fear took over his mind.

“ Shattered? ”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, ‘Shattered’? ”

He jumped away with the children still in his arms.

Or, he tried to.

Although he did manage to get away, his arms were empty by the time he reached his allies. The violent fear that took over his mind soon morphed into a worry that permeated his very bones. He was almost too scared to look over at where he had been, where those children had been. 

He did anyway. He looked and he saw those three lying on the wet ground, rain and mud soaking them even further. Naruto’s foot was getting redder and more swollen by the second. His gaze travelled up to the man’s eyes. 

Eyes? There were two now, the one he refused to open and the normal one. As he had suspected, his right eye was the same as the boy’s. Red and spinning, it drew him in and it terrified him. Were they related? 

How terrible, to make your own child a soldier.

“ What poison did you give them ” 

They didn’t answer, the principal, Cementoss and Nemuri, none of them answered. If he was being perfectly honest, he was fucking terrified at how the man might react to the lack of an answer. 

The villain's voice was monotonous and flat like he had no other worry in the world. 

Aizawa knew better, or at least he hoped he did. Despite the man sounding like he didn’t give a single shit, his gaze told a different story. It was the very same gaze that the black-haired boy had given him, moments before capture. Anger.

Anger for what? He could only assume anger for damaged merchandise. The thought only fuelled his disdain for the villain more. Did the man have a boss he answered to? Did he have clients? Would those people punish him for the ‘damaged shinobi’ ? Of course, the fact that he was angry was already a bad sign for the rest of them. Hopefully, the reinforcements would be here before anything happened.

“ sigh ”

The man moved. Aizawa nearly moved as well, not knowing whether he should charge forwards or jump back to avoid an incoming attack. Instead of moving towards them, however, the man bent down. He squatted beside the children, completely removing Aizawa and everyone behind him from his line of sight.

He was ignoring them?

The man was completely open, if he wanted to he could have probably sent out his capture cloth; it was strong enough to bind him. It would be strong enough. 

Yet, despite this, none of them moved. Perhaps it was instinctual, maybe it was because of the decades of hero work all of them had done, but every single one of them knew not to move. For despite the man’s lack of aggression and his relaxed posture, they knew, they knew as if it had been ingrained in their brains since they were children, that if they moved, the man would kill them. And the thought of being dead in just a split second was enough to keep even the most experienced of heroes from moving.

The man bent down, his pants getting soiled from kneeling on the muddied ground. He hovered over the raven-haired boy, the one lying closest to him, placing two fingers on his neck in search of a pulse. Although Aizawa knew that he would find it no matter what, since Nemuri’s quirk was one that was meant to sedate and not kill, a thought scratched incessantly at the back of his brain.

What if they had died? 

He couldn’t help the irrational worry from consuming him, they would be dead if those children died, executed at this very spot. After that worry passed, the worry for his class came. Would vengeance take over the man’s mind? Would he come after his class? No, he couldn’t allow that.

He fought his own body and took a step. When his foot landed, mud squishing too loudly under his foot, the fear washed over him again. A debilitating dread that was enough for him to start shaking. He felt a hand on his shoulder, he couldn’t gather up the strength to move to see who it was. But he could feel it, it was Nemuri. 

The man sat down, facing them. He pulled the black-haired boy up to his lap such that he was lying in between the man’s legs, his head resting on his chest, facing them. 

He looked up at them again, or at him?

“ Last chance, what poison did you give them ”

Aizawa knew no one would answer. He knew that the only response the man would get was the heavy rain freezing those children half to death. They would not answer, but it wasn’t because of their overflowing courage, nor was it because of the deep sense of heroism embedded within them. They wouldn’t answer simply because they couldn’t. 

Fear of the man and what he would do overwhelmed every single one of them. He had never felt such an intense feeling of hopelessness in his life before, it was as if his death would be the guaranteed end to this encounter, that there was no way he would live another day.

“ Fine ”

The man raised his palm to the air, the rain collected just above his palm in a large ball of liquid. A water-based quirk? He felt trepidation at what the man may do next. The man took out a kunai from his back pocket and sliced open the boy's shirt.

Fuck . 

Something bad was going to happen, he knew it. And he could do nothing about it.

The man pressed the kunai to the boy’s chest, right beneath his collarbone, a lone stripe of red appeared. It took a second but the blood flowed out quickly and in large quantities. It was too much. Too much blood for a young boy to be losing. The boy didn’t even flinch, he could only thank Nemuri’s quirk for knocking him out properly, lest he feel the pain.

The thought wouldn’t last.

In his other palm, he collected another orb of rainwater before pressing it into the wound. The water, instead of spreading, stayed on top of the wound.

The man looked at him again, this time with an unreadable expression on his face. His gaze was one that would forever be burned into Aizawa’s mind.

“ What he’s about to go through ”, he whispered.

Aizawa saw the man’s legs tighten around the boy’s torso and legs, it looked too much, the boy’s frail body looked like it would snap. 

“ I hope you understand, that you will pay the price for his…agony ”

When the last word came out of his mouth, he knew. He knew that what was about to happen to the boy was going to be fully and completely his fault. The boy was about to go through hell and there was little he could do about it. After all, there was no poison, it was just a quirk. There wasn’t a name for it, and the antidote was just time, he doubted the man would believe that.

The water seeped into his wound, and for a second, there was silence. Only the pattering of rain against the roofs of the buildings in UA was to be heard. In that moment of silence he never for a second allowed himself to hope that whatever was to happen to the boy wouldn’t be as the man had described. ‘agony’ .

He was glad he didn’t because after the moment of silence the scream that assaulted all of their ears was enough to make him cry. 

The howl that came out of the boy was animalistic. It was a scream full of anguish and misery. He had never heard a human being sound that way before. Even when he was on active duty, when he saw people whose limbs had been blown up while still attached, it didn’t compare. The boy sounded like he was getting skinned alive. Nothing but an animal being tortured, and for what?

The man only tightened his legs around the boy’s squirming body to keep him still while he tortured the boy. The hand placed over the sliced wound slowly started to collect water again, but this time, not water from the rain but from inside the boy, it was coloured pink and red. He shot out his arm and the dirtied water dropped to the ground, being absorbed by the earth.

The other hand that had been held up transferred the clean blob of rainwater to the wound again.

If the man’s goal was to get the information out of them, it worked. As the water slowly started to seep into the wound again he mustered up his courage and stepped forward.

“Stop! They'll wake up on their own!” 

He reached out, “Just stop this madness”

The man barely spared him a glance.

“ What did you give them? ”

He didn’t dare to look over his shoulder at Nemuri while the man was still looking at him. He wouldn't put her in danger.

“It’s a quirk, they’ll sleep for a couple of hours. But that’s it”

The water sitting on the cut, slowly started to drip down his body, eventually morphing with the drops of rain. The man’s legs released the boy’s body from their restraint. He pulled the boy up so that he was sitting in between his legs and looked Aizawa straight in the eye again.

“ Only sleep? ” He asked.

Aizawa only nodded in confirmation.

The red eye pierced his gaze, it felt as if his very soul was put on display for all to see. He wouldn’t lie about this but the mere thought of lying about anything while under that gaze was crushed before they even formed.

__________________________________________________

Almost instantly after he nodded, his body was assaulted with fatigue and a blinding headache. He dropped to his knees, his vision going white from the pain. He felt hands on both his shoulders.

It was Nemuri, “ Eraserhead? OI! Aizawa!?... Shouta!?? Hey! ”

He couldn’t answer, it felt as if even the slightest movement would cause his head to explode. Warmth spread down to his mouth, it dripped onto his tongue and he tasted iron. That wasn’t good. He placed his arms on the ground to steady himself.

“ What did you do to him! ”

In the limited awareness he had, he didn’t hear the man answer, instead, he fell back into Nemuri’s arms, she supported his weight when he couldn’t even muster the energy to kneel anymore.

His vision started to clear, but he couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening, everything seemed like a blur. His head ached and his body stung with soreness.

In front of him, the standing man was a blur of white and green, he bent down beside the boy. He shot up, the boy, seemingly healed from whatever had ailed him.

“ Sasuke, bring Naruto and Sakura aside, make sure you aren't outside my range”

He saw a flash of black race past the field, away from them. Aizawa had no will to stay awake anymore, the pain was excruciating, and Nemuri’s embrace was much too warm for him to fight. He closed his eyes and placed trust in his colleagues and friends. 

They would survive, he knew it.

_

Kakashi tried to feel some semblance of pity for the man, but the only feeling he could find was disgust at how easily the man passed out. The genjutsu he put on the man was barely above genin level, a D-rank jutsu. If he were being reasonable, however, he could admit that they couldn’t be blamed for their lack of genjutsu resistance.

He closed his Sharingan.

By now, he would have been an idiot to not have noticed. They were in a different dimension….well either that or he was caught in Itachi’s genjutsu. 

Technically, the latter was more realistic but if he were truly caught, there was nothing he could do to escape regardless, so another dimension was the scenario he had decided on. Besides, this type of reality wasn’t the kind of genjutsu Itachi had specialised in - the Uchiha had focused more on the… ‘torture and interrogate to insanity’ aspect of genjutsu.

He didn’t have much time to gather information, but on the way to his team, he could pick up tidbits here and there. The people here had no chakra network - which made it a challenge to weave the genjutsus into their systems- some of them also had animal-like mutations, not unlike Hoshigake Kisame. He had yet to see any show of the fighting prowess in this world but based on their physical capabilities and lack of defence planning in their architecture, he doubted their aptitude in combat would be much greater than what he could handle.

Speaking of structures, the buildings and houses here were tall, there were many things that differed from the five nations. It seemed technology had advanced to an astonishing degree in this world. Although he doubted Konoha would ever implement the architecture of these buildings even if their tech did improve. Mostly because it led to very poor fighting conditions and it would be a breeding ground for enemies to carry out stealth-based missions - much like the Hidden Rain, now that he thought about it.

Kakashi spared a lazy glance to the right, Sasuke had carried Sakura and Naruto to safety. He didn’t bother waking the other two up. It’s good for the children to take a long sleep, especially after vigorous activity, it would help build their muscles. Besides, they were too inexperienced to help out right now.

Oh!

“Sasuke!”

He had almost forgotten, from his pocket he took out another pouch of smelling salts out and tossed it over to him. 

“Ask Sakura to heal Naruto’s foot”

He had a feeling that the nine-tails would heal the foot for Naruto by itself but there was no reason to risk Sasuke questioning the reason why such a bad injury was healed in under an hour. Besides, it would be good for Sakura to practice her medical ninjutsu on a live patient, in the real world, for once.

From the corner of his eye he saw the Uchiha jump up to catch it - oh how cute - and place it under Sakura’s nose. She jumped up.

He focused back on the people in front of him. At the back was a man? A stone block person who he would have to watch out for, in front of him were the man who passed out, the woman who caught him and a large rat standing beside them.

The rat made him up his guard. There was something about him.

“HEY WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM, YOU BASTARD!”

The lady stood up, placing the guy gently on the floor. 

He smiled, “Nothing he can’t handle…hopefully”

The lady didn’t seem appeased by that answer. 

That was the best answer he could give because honestly he really didn’t know how the people of this world would handle a genjutsu. The one he had used on the man was the mildest one he could offer if he wanted his interrogation to work. 

Normally he wouldn’t even bother using the Sharingan for such a simple illusion but he needed the precise control the eye gave just to make sure he wouldn’t scorch the man’s neurons and leave him brain dead.

“Who shattered his foot?”

Kakashi doubted it was the guy who passed out, when he was in the genjutsu, he genuinely seemed to care for his team - which he had to admit, was quite odd seeing as there were traces of Sasuke’s chakra residing just under his skin. The kid had probably tried to place him in a genjutsu, and knowing him, if it had succeeded, the man wouldn’t be breathing right now.

He searched their faces for traces of guilt. It didn’t help. All of them looked equally guilty, confused and angry.

None of them did it. All of them were nervous but not for the right reasons. 

.

.

.

Surely it couldn’t be…right? 

Naruto was an idiot but he wasn’t that dumb.

.

.

.

Yes, he was.

He absolutely was that dumb.

Kakashi took a moment to mourn the loss of the genius genes of Kushina and Minato. Their son was an idiot. 

He couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Tears started to form in the corners of his eyes. The kid broke his own foot to escape, but by doing so, lost the ability to escape. He stopped abruptly. Did he not teach him not to do that? Wow, he really wasn’t a good teacher was he?

His head swivelled over to the side, to his team. He inspected both Sakura and Sasuke’s faces carefully, not letting a single twitch go unnoticed. 

Yep, that was it. The faces of guilty children. Faces that he had seen too many times not to notice. 

At the very least, they were making up for it by healing Naruto’s foot. Or at least Sakura was.

“Sasuke! Who shattered his foot”

The boy turned red and faced him like he had been caught stealing Kunai from his father’s office. Kakashi suppressed another giggle that ran through his entire body, it was getting harder and harder to breathe by the second.

He avoided eye contact, “That idiot broke his own foot!”

At this, he couldn’t hold it in anymore. He broke down in laughter, tears lining the edges of his eyes. Oh, how he loved them! He really did, despite all their stupid pranks and stupid thoughts he really really loved them. 

And then came crashing down a wave of embarrassment. He had threatened that whoever was going to hurt his students would be tortured but now that he knew Naruto had done it himself….well. He couldn’t torture his own student now, could he? 

Before he could apologise, the large rat started to speak, “I suggest you leave now and hand yourself in, if you don’t, All might is coming and he will not hesitate to capture you by force”

Capture?

That was something he hadn’t had the experience of yet. 

The way the rat spoke of All might made it sound as if he was supposed to know the guy, maybe he was a legend. Like the fourth Hokage was. If that was the case, then he couldn’t afford to mess around anymore, things were getting serious and he had Shinobi to protect.

If All Might was anything close to what would warrant being a legend in the shinobi nations, in his current state, he would stand close to no chance in combat with him. On the other hand, if his strength was consistent with what he had observed in this world, then he might just make it out of a full-fledged fight with just enough energy to get his team and himself to safety afterwards. But as he said, he honestly really couldn’t take the risk seeing as how he didn’t have any backup and instead had three genin under his wing.

Although…the people here seemed to have a soft spot for them.

He stood up as straight as he possibly could and suppressed his shaking, “There has been a misunderstanding”

It was uncomfortable to admit such an embarrassing mistake but it had to be done. He wasn’t looking for a fight. The situation wasn’t made any less awkward by the great distance, the passed-out man and the confused looks on the people’s faces.

Kakashi wondered if he should close the gap so that he didn’t need to strain his voice - would the people go on the defensive? Should he treat them as shinobi or civilians? Or perhaps as something completely different? He really hated how uncertain the situation was, he didn’t want them to get defensive and start fighting him.

“I don’t mean any harm”

He was only met with angry gazes. Kakashi racked his mind for the diplomacy lessons he was put through over a decade ago.

He took a step closer, “My students and I come from a different…place. We require your assistance to get back”

There, straight to the point. He could explain all the details when everything calmed down, there wasn’t any need to add to the tension now by telling them that they had just crossed dimensions. 

Unfortunately, as he looked upon their faces, for some odd reason they looked angrier than before. Did he say something to offend them? Maybe they were just hostile and he should reconsider fighting them. He looked over them once again, the lady and the block of stone looked to be fuming while the rat was deep in thought.

Hopefully, the rat understood.

“What did you do to him?”

The rat pointed down to the passed-out man. 

Kakashi wondered if he needed to explain the details of genjutsu to them, sure he was a teacher but not theirs’. 

“I put his mind under some strain, he’ll probably wake up in an hour”

Actually…

“Or maybe in a week.”

‘Maybe not at all.’ He didn't know if the guy would wake up perfectly fine or not, but judging by how he was still breathing, his brain probably hasn’t turned to mush…hopefully. 

The rat started walking closer to him, “But what did you do to him”

He could only sigh, he didn’t understand why they couldn’t just accept that he would wake up and get on with it.

“I casted an illusion to find out what you guys did to my team”

“So you have an illusion quirk?”

“An illusion quirk?”

Did he mean kekkei genkai? The genjutsu he used wasn’t limited to bloodlines, and he couldn’t use his Sharingan for any sort of complex genjutsu unless it was to refine an illusion. So speaking specifically, no he didn’t. But did he really want to deal with the hassle of trying to explain his Sharingan and bloodline mutations to people who likely had no concept or clue about bloodlines? No, no he didn’t.

“Yes”

The rat only moved closer, “Can you wake him up?”

He had to think about that. Right now? No. If a half-decent medic-nin were here? Absolutely. He knew that Sakura had been training her medical ninjutsu in private but she still wasn’t exactly a medic-nin. She could heal torn ligaments, broken bones and maybe a mild concussion. 

With her genius, she might be able to heal some of the damaged neurons from a simple genjutsu but it honestly wouldn’t be worth the chakra and time she would spend on the task. Especially because despite her excellent chakra control, she did not have any experience meddling with brains. 

He could try his hand. This was a great opportunity to build trust and he had to make use of it. 

Now, although he could not heal broken bones as well as Sakura could, broken minds were another matter.

Working with Obito, his friend would on occasion fry a suspect’s brain a little too much when they were interrogating them. When Rin wasn’t around and push came to shove, he was the one with the better chakra control, and they absolutely could not have afforded to lose information. In the end, many ended up blind or unable to move their limbs but it hardly mattered since none of them lived past the rest of the interrogation anyway.

Of course, he had grown since then. 

He hoped so anyway.

“Do you want me to wake him up?”

He doubted they would say yes. The mind was a fragile thing and even he would refuse another random shinobi’s help in medical ninjutsu if he didn’t know them.

The rat didn’t answer, his face showed no emotion. Kakashi felt a growing suspicion.

-

As usual, suspicions were right.

-

Really, he couldn’t blame them, because he would have done the exact same thing if he were placed in their position. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t feel at least a little bit pissed off. 

Their lord and saviour ‘All Might’ had come to rescue them, and he made no small show of it either. He landed right in between the rat and him, he landed so heavily that mud splashed all over himself and Kakashi. He slowly wiped away the thick layer of mud that covered his face.

When he opened his eyes, he had to admit, he was impressed. The man was absolutely huge, he was a behemoth of a man, all that and yet he was still wearing a tight skin-fitting suit that looked like it belonged in a cartoon for children.

But he couldn’t worry about the guy in front of him right now. Because those fucking bastards were trying to abduct his team again. His head swivelled to the left. He exposed his Sharingan and let out all the killing intent he could muster without scaring his students too. 

Right now he was preoccupied with the mammoth in front of him but that didn’t mean he could just abandon his duties as a teacher. 

As it stood now, they were in a relatively open field, he was standing with his back to a thick forest and in front of him was All might. Behind the man was that lady dragging the passed-out man to what he could only assume was safety. Off to his right, his team were sitting, Sasuke and Sakura sitting patiently like the good kids they were while Naruto snoozed away, foot completely healed. Maybe half a kilometre away from them was the block of stone and the rat sitting on his shoulder. 

Their advance to his team was cut short by his sudden release of all that killing intent. That should keep them at bay for a while, if anything, Sasuke could keep them busy and maybe even incapacitate them.

Kakashi turned his attention back to All might. He wondered if he could still reason with them despite the pressure in the air.

It wouldn’t hurt to give it another try, “I don’t want to fight! We need help in going back to where we came from,”.

“Bold words for someone clearly threatening our lives”, All might had a loud voice.

Impressive, considering his allies looked to be struggling to even take a breath and blink.

He clicked his tongue, “I wouldn’t have had to do all this if you would just leave us and let me explain”

What could he do? He wasn’t familiar with the world and he needed assistance to get back. Maybe he could take advantage of the soft spot they seemed to have for his team.

“Sasuke, Sakura! Come here!” 

Those two made it halfway.

“WITH NARUTO!”

Honestly! With how their teamwork looked, they would need more drills. When he got home he’d be sure to plan a month-long camping trip. He’d make sure once and for all that they knew who their team was once that month was over.

“STOP!”

He raised an eyebrow. And spared a glance back at All might. That giant smile of him that had been putting him off finally turned into a frown.

With his hand pointed out to stop his team from advancing, he spoke, “Leave those children out of this matter, even the cruellest villains i’ve faced wouldn’t dare harm a child in front of me”

Kakashi tried to suppress the second bout of killing intent that almost exited his body. If it had escaped that rat might have dissolved into a puddle of fear. Despite his efforts, a small amount leaked out and that was enough. His sharingan caught the shiver that ran through All might.

“ Sasuke, Sakura, come here ”

They continued to walk to him, Naruto being carried in between the two.

“You really don’t get it do you?”, All might said.

That smile reappeared back on his face, Kakashi felt a sense of dread. 

How creepy.

The man stood tall and jumped to block the path between him and his team.

“I won’t let you hurt them, because I am here!”

His eye twitched, “I won’t hurt them”

Was that what they wanted to hear? 

It took him a bit but maybe he finally got it. In this world there was peace, or at least there were no wars, none that he could see. The people here were lacking in combat skills because they had no need for them. 

Once peace is achieved, children will be allowed to be children - that was what Minato had always said. Perhaps this world had achieved what the five nations never could; absolute peace.

Kakashi couldn’t see Sakura and Sasuke’s faces, on account of the large mountain standing in between them, but if he could he would assume those two were probably confused.

He stopped with the killing intent, that was a good first step. 

They needed to get back soon; the third was gone and with word of the assassination of the Fourth Kazekage, Konoha would need as many shinobi and especially jonin to defend the village. As of now, Konoha was Kageless, of course, this was a state that could only continue for at most two days before all hell broke loose.

Any longer without a Kage and the village would suffer attacks from all neighbouring Great Nations. This in turn may very well lead to the start of another War. 

They had stayed in this world for too long already, they had duties back home. More notably, he was a Jonin who had many missions to attend to after a large population of experienced shinobi were killed off in Orochimaru’s invasion.

“Who is the leader of this place”, if these people wouldn’t listen to him, he needed to find the leader.

It wasn’t All Might, he knew that much just by looking at him. He stood there, blocking him from his students with a confidence he had to admire, but he didn’t have the workings of a ‘leader’. At least not one in the sense of having to deal with piles of paperwork and politics.

“Me”

It was the rat. He walked up to him, and Kakashi had to applaud his bravery. Although he was still sitting on the stone man’s shoulder, it was still good enough he supposed. He had noticed something about the rat earlier but he couldn’t figure out what. Until now that is. 

The rat wasn’t nervous at all. Other than when he filled the field with killing intent, the rat didn’t stutter in movements a single time. It reminded him of a genius rouge, less deadly and cruel, but the bare bones were there.

He tried not to strain his neck to look up at the rat, “I don’t want to fight, can we speak inside?”

He couldn’t read the rat’s eyes, they were black. Pupiless. 

“How can I trust you?”

Kakashi suppressed a sigh. He hated that question, it wasn’t one shinobi ever bothered answering; mostly because shinobi couldn’t be trusted. The exception was a Five Kage meeting or a meeting within the village under a powerful enough shinobi.

There wasn’t anything he could do to gain trust without having at least a little to start. He could offer to heal the man again, but they wouldn’t trust him to mess around with his mind. He could explain the situation now, but would they believe him? 

He tried to think of something. Yet the only thing he could come up with was a display of strength. 

He looked down at the rat, “What do you want me to do?”

“Give us the children to take care of and we can speak inside”

“No”

That rat should know better by now, the audacity of even asking him that. Hand over his team to the enemy? Does he think he’s delusional? The rat seemed taken aback by his quick answer - that was a first. 

Perhaps he should offer an alternative, “My team will stay with me while we talk, you can keep an eye on them if you wish”

“Will you let us restrain you?”

Could he refuse? Yes. But as he said, he had no time for negotiation, they needed help and as long as Sakura, Sasuke and Naruto were safe, he would agree to any deal. Also, their binds couldn’t hold him anyway.

-

Quite soon he found himself sitting at the head of a large desk, Sakura and Sasuke standing next to him while Naruto was still snoozing in a chair to his right. His arms were kept in front of him on the desk, they were embedded into a heavy piece of stone summoned by the stone-man. 

In that room, about as large as the Hokage's office, he was faced with about a dozen solemn-faced people. He could almost feel the anger radiating off of them, he wondered why they were so angry at him, other than incapacitating that man he really hadn’t done anything else.

Regardless, he did feel a certain pressure to ensure all the questions asked would be answered correctly. 

Thus began the nearly 12-hour-long discussion.

Chapter Text

He’d like to think that the discussions would result in complete understanding and the formation of new allies. And the fact that he hasn’t been thrown into jail, or whatever equivalent they had in this world, should have been a sure sign that they were safe; but he just couldn’t let go of the feeling that something bad was coming.

Instincts were something that came naturally to every shinobi, instincts only sharpened with every mission they went on and every companion they lost.

 Kakashi was no different. 

In fact, at the risk of sounding like a pretentious asshole, he had better instincts than all the jonin and perhaps even some of the Kage. Of course that didn’t mean shit in the face of a real battle but it was an essential skill to avoid getting caught by surprise and killed. 

However, instincts weren’t always right. Sometimes they may signal for an uncomfortable situation rather than a deadly one, other times, they may signal for a deadly one rather than an embarrassing one. 

Instincts had faults, however, there was an exception to this rule, and that exception was him. His gut feelings were never wrong. It was a curse, to know that something would go wrong but not knowing what. The months, weeks, days, and hours leading up to that one deadly moment was a living hell.

He could not just ‘sleep it off’ nor could he ignore it. Before Obito, those hairs rising on the back of his neck were few and far in between, they never meant anything more than a broken bone during one of his spars or a losing battle with Guy. But that was before Obito.

On the days before the mission to destroy Kannabi bridge, the hairs on the back of his neck were constantly raised, he felt a chill go through his bones every hour or so. So he waited patiently for an injury to befall him or his teammates, he even made extra sure to protect Rin so that she could come along and heal them if they got hurt on the mission. 

As the days passed and the mission to Kannabi drew nearer, the dread overwhelmed his senses. Eventually, the day of the mission came, there wasn’t anything special on that day, there was no great big thunderstorm, nor were there any important major missions. No, there was nothing special about that day. The mission had been expected to proceed smoothly with minimal risk; especially since he was a ‘prodigy’. 

Yet despite all this, the safety of having his friends and the easy mission, he simply couldn’t shake the sense of dread. 

In the end, he didn’t tell the team. After all, although it was much worse this time, his instincts never signalled anything more than a minor injury. He had often wondered whether his teammates would still be alive if he had warned them, if they had prepared more, or even if he had simply left Rin and Obito back in Konoha and proceeded with the mission himself.

-

The feeling didn’t go away when Rin was taken. It didn’t ease up either, no, instead it multiplied tenfold. It was worse than any sickness he ever had before. He didn’t sleep until after the mission to save rin. Obito and he spent three days searching for her. Kakashi summoned all of his hounds and let Akino and Guruko call for reinforcements. Despite the chakra exhaustion he suffered from this, he still could not bring himself to sleep.

When he found her the fear didn’t settle, he could tell something would go wrong. Deep in his heart, he wished more than anything for Minato to come rushing in. He knew it wouldn’t happen, that even if his teacher was on the way, it would be at least another day before he could make it. 

-

Obito didn’t make it. Minato came 5 hours and 21 minutes later, while he and Rin were by a river. He was washing off the blood spewing from his- no Obito’s eye. 

-

The ache in his heart only deepened after that. All the way up to Rin’s death. After which it felt as if his heart no longer even existed, in his chest was left a gaping cavity filled with guilt, sorrow and dread. Even after Rin, the sinking feeling in his stomach did not disappear.

Of course, now, nearly two decades later, he knew that his instincts were actually spot on. They not only foresaw the death of Obito but also Rin, Minato and Kushina. 

-

He hated himself for what he felt after Minato’s and Kushina’s deaths. Relief. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t the only thing he felt either, but it was the first thing he felt. The feeling happened instantaneously, the moment he realised that they weren’t coming back, it washed over him. It wasn’t relief that they were dead, or that hundreds, maybe thousands of shinobi had died, it was relief that that dreadful sinkhole that had been residing in his stomach for nearly a year had finally disappeared.

The relief went away when he realised that Minato and Kushina, the closest people he had to living relatives, were truly gone. And that they left a little boy in their wake, one who would be tormented for the entirety of his childhood.

Instincts were usually a warning for shinobi. But for him, it was a promise, it was fate. 

He only had three people he worried and cared about right now. His team. He was sure that something would happen to them, whether it be only one of them or all of them. And he was sure that it would be deadly, well, either that or something worse than death would come up. The thought of that made him sick. 

-

Kakashi sat in the cushioned chair positioned at the corner of the room. 

He could feel the eyes on them, even if he couldn’t see them. He could maybe go five days without sleep before it started impairing his ability to protect his team, he could survive. The watchful gazes of the invisible people unnerved him, the walls were solid here, with no see-through glass or window. 

He wondered whether his team could sense them too, or whether they were simply too tired to care. Since they came here, he hadn’t had any time to give them any sort of information. They had been kidnapped, interrogated and had to fight off their captors all in the span of a couple of days.

He wondered if they missed Konoha, or if they knew the political climate of the five nations right now. And how their disappearance would affect that, or more specifically how Naruto’s disappearance would be detrimental to Konoha.

Should he tell them? Would it place a sense of urgency in their heads or panic? What could he even tell them? Before briefing his team on anything he should first make sure he understood what was going on, which was enough trouble in itself. To be honest, he had no idea what was going on and the thought of never making it home scared him.

Kakashi couldn’t remember what led to them being here. 

Only that The Third was killed by Orochimaru and that Princess Tsunade was about to be appointed as the new Hokage. Had they gone on a mission or anything? His memory was blurred, it frustrated him, he was right on the edge of knowing and the only thing stopping him was himself and his god-awful memory. 

His head dropped back, gently falling to rest on the wall. He was still wearing his Jounin uniform and his headband. Normally he wouldn’t mind staying in the outfit for months on end; but normally he was on missions that required his utmost attention and meant life or death for either him, his teammates or the village.

But now? He couldn’t help but be swayed by the calm nature of this world. Watching his students sleep so comfortably in what looked like a quadruple stuffed pillow on a plush futon of sorts, covered by the thickest blanket he had seen was really tempting him to just give in and join them.

Instead, he repositioned himself, keeping an eye constantly on his sleeping students. They were in enemy territory no matter how comfortable it seemed, it was his job to protect them, and he would not risk them getting ambushed in their sleep.

He set his mind to spending the time planning how he could escape the room with his team should anything happen.

-

“Who are you?”

He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to tell them.

“I’m Hatake Kakashi, captain of team 7 and the Lord Hokage’s shield”

He pointed to each of his team as he named them, “This is Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto”

He didn’t miss the way their names were written down and ‘discreetly’ passed to a man with a dog’s face.

“What is your relationship with the children?”

“I’m their superior…and guardian”

“Superior? Who do you work for?”

There was a pause in the conversation…

“ Ask the children to sit ”

Kakashi looked to his left. Opposite from him, about a metre away, there was a tall man, quite muscular especially compared to what he had seen in this world. 

He ignored the man.

“I work only for my village”

He could feel the rising anger permeating from the muscular man.

He supposed now was as good a time as any to start explaining their situation.

“We require your assistance, my team and I do not come from this world and we need your help to get back…home”

The muscular man stood, “Nezu, you can’t seriously expect us to trust this… villain?! Especially after he did god knows what to Eraserhead. I say we send him back to Tartarus, for good this time, and give these children proper assistance and rehabilitation!”

“Who do you think you are?! Speaking to us as if we’re the ones who kidnapped you!” 

Kakashi didn’t need to look to know who had said that. Sakura. He couldn’t blame her for speaking out, hell, in fact, he could be grateful that Naruto was passed out right now for if he wasn’t, he may very well finish the discussions in under half an hour. Still, he really needed to brush them up on the protocol of being stuck in enemy territory.

He gave a soft sigh, signalling her to shut up.

“Forgive my student, she is only speaking to correct your callousness”

Despite her speaking out, he couldn’t very well throw his own student under the bus now, could he? Besides, she was right, and they were really starting to get on his nerves. Again.

“ My callousness?! ”

“ Vlad ”

There was a lapse in anger when the rat spoke, ‘Vlad’ backed down and sat, though, from the corner of his eye, the man still seemed to be fuming and on the verge of burning the place down.

“You say you are from a different world. Prove it.”.

“We don’t have quirks”

It was a shot in the dark, but he was pretty certain he knew what these ‘quirks’ were now. When he first came to this world and faced the man with the red eyes as well as the one who could detect lies, he had assumed that they simply had bloodline limits. Then he met the rat who had asked him if he had an illusion quirk. So he came to the conclusion that quirks were what they called bloodline limits in this world. 

But that wasn’t the case. He realised it after the near battle, none of them shared any similarities in their abilities. So did that mean that bloodlines were the only things giving power to individuals in this world? He wasn’t sure.

What he was sure about was that each of them only had one ability. That man with the red eyes, could probably suppress bloodline limits, the lady in the lewd outfit, was a poisons master, and the Stoneman was proficient in a sort of earth release.

Of course, all this was speculation, but if being in the Anbu taught him anything, it was to be able to discern bloodline limits in just a spar or by observing one’s behaviours. Of course, that was usually with the knowledge of every single bloodline in the Land of Fire and various important or deadly bloodlines from other nations.

Kakashi waited for one of them to speak, but the room was simply engulfed in silence.

“Where we come from, people can mould chakra into varying degrees of proficiency”

He attempted to put out his palm before remembering it was still encased in stone. Hm. Should he break the stone? Would that aggravate them even more?

He decided against doing the demo himself, “Sasuke, please demonstrate a lightning and fire release”

Only after those words came out of his mouth did he realise he probably should have woken Naruto up or asked Sakura to do the demo. As far as he knew, Sasuke’s favourite jutsus were The Great Fireball and Chidori, hopefully, the boy would at least have enough brain to not unleash a full-sized jutsu here.

“Katon” 

He saw a warm flame dance lightly on Sasuke’s palm, for him to be able to concentrate the flame like that, the boy must’ve been training his chakra control. Before long, the flame sputtered out into tendrils of dark smoke and he drew back his palm. That was good. Maybe he had been worrying for nothi-

The excitement in his voice sent chills down his spine, “Chidori”

“Sa!-”

The coils of lightning licked his cheeks and he nearly had to close his eyes because of how bright the jutsu was. The sound of a thousand chirping birds filled the room. Kakashi could only slump in his chair and smile in dismay at the show of power his student had just displayed.

The people sitting opposite him stood up, alarmed. However before they could shout out, The Chidori disappeared and the room was once again silenced. His ears rang.

Kakashi could almost feel the self-serving smile Sasuke was probably smiling right now. He needed to put the kid’s ego in check. As of now, with his current chakra level, Sasuke could only do a Chidori twice a day, and he had just wasted one of them on this. 

“Are you convinced?”, the boy said.

“ Sasuke ”

He backed down, leaving Kakashi to deal with what he had just done. 

“Please sit”

Sasuke needed to learn his place. When they got back, maybe 100 rounds around Konoha would do it. 

Although…the kid did have too much of a burden on him, tasked with avenging his entire clan at such an age…he wasn’t a prodigy, genius maybe, but not a prodigy. His burden was to become stronger than his brother, but was that really possible for him right now? 

At Sasuke’s age, Itachi was already as good as pretty much all the Jonin in Konoha and could probably take an A-rank mission solo. Now? After all those years, that traitor had likely far surpassed him in terms of skill and technique. From an unbiased point of view, as his teacher, Sasuke had a long way to go before he could even hope to reach Itachi’s level. 

His rushing into danger in hopes of honing his skills was more likely to get him killed before he could even meet Itachi again. His appetite for strength and his lust for revenge would send him down a dangerous path, one that even he as the kid’s teacher wouldn’t be able to pull him back from. Kakashi had to nip his restlessness before it festered anymore.

He started, once everyone had hesitantly taken a seat, “From my observations, in this world people only hold a singular focused power. I don’t know if this observation is correct or if what my student just showed you is proof enough, but I sincerely hope it is”

The room was coddled in a thick silence.

Kakashi kept quiet, gazing into the rat’s beady eyes.

“How could you willingly put your students through such a life at such a young age…especially when you clearly care for them?”

It was All Might, he had been quiet the entire meeting. Kakashi had nearly started to think that act just now was only a show of bravado. Or that this All Might was simply all brawn and no brain.

He cocked his head to the right, “They are shinobi”

This generation has not yet even experienced true war; he would hope they would never have to. They have only gone through what normal shinobi would, at least in the time under him. He couldn’t speak on what had happened to Sasuke and Naruto before they were Genin, but that wasn’t the question, what happened to those two was a factor of a war long gone.

“They are children”

“They are Shinobi before they are children, such is the sacrifice they have to make for the village”

Besides, Shinobi stopped being children once they graduated from the Academy. Once they were genin, they would face the harsh reality of this world, whether they wanted to or not. When an enemy attacks they will not give pause even if the person they are confronting is a ‘child’. Shinobi live and die for the village, that was their duty to their family and friends.

All Might tilted his head down, keeping silent. A shadow cast over his eyes, Kakashi couldn’t make out what he was feeling. On the other hand, he could certainly feel the hateful gazes of the rest of the people at the table.

And apparently, his students could feel it too. He could practically taste the anger radiating from behind him…mostly from Sasuke, he inferred.

The boy had lost his family and almost everyone he knew when he really was just a child. Now that he was a fully-fledged shinobi who had gone through countless trials, it was no doubt frustrating to still be called a child.

“Do you really wish to return?” This time his gaze was centred above Kakashi’s head.

His blood boiled at the question. All Might went over his authority to directly question his team even after what he had told the man about being a Shinobi and the sacrifices that came with it. And to ask such a question, was beyond disrespectful, true shinobi could never even dream of deserting their village.

“Wh-”

He was cut short by another voice.

“Hey, old man, who do you think you are?”, his voice was unusually scratchy, like he had just woken up from a month of sleep.

His thin lip soon turned into a hateful scowl.“First, you threaten and harm my team, you disrespect my teacher, then you call us children, and now you’re asking us to abandon Konoha and become rogue nin?”

Kakashi felt his heart drop.

“Come here and I’ll show you who you’re messing with ”, the sound that came out of his mouth was almost guttural, as if the words were only formed right at the tip of his tongue with no thought but anger. He could feel the venom dripping from his voice.

Shit.

He hadn't even noticed Naruto had been awake. How did he miss that? Naruto had never been the type to keep quiet especially if people he cared for were being ‘disrespected’, so he didn’t pay much attention to him. Had he finally gained some self-control? Maybe he was smart enough to understand the gravity of the situation and managed to hold his tongue…at least until now.

The kid was on the edge of his seat, staring down a man who was nearly twice his height. 

Small hairs on the back of Kakashi’s neck rose. The devil’s chakra. His skin tingled from the acrid energy radiating from his student, he could almost see the ugly, hateful orange chakra collecting around him, smothering his usual warm ardent nature.

“Naruto”, he reached out his hand.

The boy was facing away from him, if his eyes had turned into those cold-slitted eyes, it would take a lot more than a gentle reminder to calm him down.

He stood up before his hand could rest on his shoulder.

“ Do you take us for filthy traitors!? ”

Kakashi’s chair dragged loudly against the blue flooring. 

“ Naruto ”, he placed a hand on his shoulder. 

His palm burned. He could feel the Nine Tails’ chakra, it was just as vile and disgusting as it was on the day Minato and Kushina died. His hands only closed tighter on Naruto’s shoulder.

“Calm down boy”

-

Sometimes one’s body will take over, it will go against the will of the brain and control itself to protect itself from danger. Shinobi are trained to resist this, but sometimes it really can’t be controlled. Such as now. 

He pulled away faster than he could react, his palm was covered in blisters and burned raw. 

And just as his body took over to prevent his hand from melting off the bone, his body took over to protect his students. Kakashi’s hand struck the back of Naruto’s head, he saw the crimson liquid dye his blond hair red.

He caught the boy in his arms, before he could drop to the floor, and gently placed him back on the chair. Once he was knocked out and the Nine-tails’ chakra dissipated, the room cooled ten-fold. Kakashi took a seat again, Naruto was ‘awake’ for less than a minute before he was knocked out again, this time at the hands of his teacher.

-

“What did you do!?”, it was the stone man this time.

“I knocked him out”

He could barely keep his composure. If Naruto had manifested even a single tail he wouldn’t count on being able to keep Sasuke and Sakura safe in such a small room while at the same time attempting to subdue Naruto. His palm throbbed under the table, it hurt more than a usual burn, it felt as if hot coals were encasing his entire hand and forearm. He felt blood drip down his fingertips onto the floor.

The looks they gave him made it seem as if he tortured the kid to death; they should be more scared of what Naruto was about to do rather than what he did to the boy.

Nezu, looked to Vlad, “get recovery girl here right now”

“He doesn’t require medical attention”

Besides the fact that Naruto really did not need medical attention, he would be damned if he let a medic, whom he knew nothing of, touch his student.

“He likely has a concussion, if you don’t let him be treated he might die”, the rat jumped from the stone man’s shoulder and onto the table.

.

.

.

Kakashi spared a short glance behind his right shoulder, “Sakura, don’t wake him up”

She moved almost immediately to Naruto, the girl had likely been itching to get to him before talk of healing even came up. From the corner of his eye, he saw a green glow emanating from her hands. She would make a stunning Medic-nin when she grew up and got proper training.

He didn’t break eye contact.

“Satisfied?”

Kakashi didn’t let them object any further before continuing, “We were sidetracked, but back to the topic. I do not wish to spend any more time here than necessary, and I’m sure you hold the same sentiments. I will require all your scrolls on interdimensional travel and your experts on the matter.”

If he was honest, his fear was starting to really get to him. He had already lost the people he held dear over a decade ago, if he came back too late and Konoha was obliterated by war he would never be able to forgive himself for dilly-dallying in another dimension while the village was getting torn apart.

He wasn’t dumb, he knew negotiations could take place only if both parties received something in return. 

“In return, I will take down any organisation or person you wish to be dead…free of charge”, the people here didn’t seem like they would pose too much of a threat to him, so this offer was more like pest extermination to him. Not anything particularly difficult, just tiring.

Although, whether or not he would keep his end of the deal would be unlikely. Getting back to the village was his priority, and once they found a way home he would not be doing pest control for them. Of course, if he could find a way to come back here safely, he would gladly return his part of the deal.

Nezu finally spoke again, “Unfortunately we don’t have the authority to bring all the experts here…nor do we have any information on interdimensional travel. And we cannot take up your offer of hired killings”

So they couldn’t do anything, and he had just wasted his time coming here and even attempting to negotiate. The irritation showed on his face.

The rat made his way back to the opposite end of the table and took a seat, “Would you perhaps like to stay the night and we can continue discussions in the morning when we are fresh”

Kakashi hesitated. He honestly doubted they would harm his team, but the thought of sleeping in enemy territory, especially where they could get no reinforcements, was certainly daunting. But he couldn’t say no, could he? He didn’t have to look at them to know, Sakura and Sasuke were on the verge of collapse.

He could sense their mild chakra fatigue, which was even worse for Sasuke after that display of Chidori, although…he didn’t seem to be suffering from a mild case of chakra depletion. In fact, from what he could feel, his chakra was nearly completely spent, at the very most he would be able to push out a mini fireball jutsu - after which he would pass out. 

Naruto was perhaps the only one who didn’t need any more rest. He should be completely fine by now, with that demon’s healing, but he wouldn’t wake until tomorrow at the very least, courtesy of that hit to the back of his head.

-

They were led to a spacious room. He carried Naruto to the large cushion and covered him with the blanket they provided. Sasuke and Sakura weren’t far behind. It seemed they didn’t even have enough energy to wash up or get changed since they collapsed right next to Naruto soon after his body hit the cushion. The room was unnaturally cold for the season. Kakashi doubled up their blankets and pushed them closer together to retain the heat.

He took his seat in the far left corner, near a large window.

-

Time passed slowly.

-

He had no shortage of it to think about how fucked they were. His head filled with worry and uneasiness. There was something wrong, he was missing something and he couldn’t figure out what it was. His mind was muddled, the temptation of joining his students in the warm plush cushion under the thick blankets was getting to him. His eyes felt heavy with fatigue yet his body was kept awake by the paranoia of that sinking feeling deep in his gut.

Should he take a shower? 

And take his eyes off his team? 

No. 

He sat up straighter, fixing his posture. 

There was something wrong. 

Kakashi brought his hand up to his headband and lifted it off of his eye. He closed his right eye and slowly the room bled to red and his senses were enhanced tenfold. The boost of chakra to his eye gave him a headache, but it also cleared his mind a little. He looked around the room, there was nothing out of place. 

There were two devices under the coffee table but he couldn’t tell what they were. He checked the bathroom, standing from his seat for the first time since he sat down 3 hours ago. There wasn’t anything in the bathroom either, only a shower, toilet and sink.

He closed the Sharingan and dropped the headband down again. 

He was just wasting chakra. 

The unease in his stomach seemed to double. 

He moved to where his team was sleeping. 

This was the exact same feeling he had on the day Obito died, but more. Fear for his student’s safety overtook his mind.

Should he wake them?

Kakashi was scared. He was scared that if he moved even a finger, the ceiling would collapse on them or that a deadly trap set by the people in this world would set off. It only lasted for a second, yet it felt like eternity.

The feeling dissipated. He nearly let his guard down before remembering how it disappeared the last time he felt it - when Kushina and Minato passed. Kakshi didn’t waste a second waking his students. He felt for each of their pulses in case they had been poisoned. They woke almost instantly. 

“Kakashi-sensei?”

“Stay still, don’t move”

The room was silent for a moment, he could hear the buzzing of the devices under the coffee table and the shallow breaths of his students. Then he felt it. 

Chakra.

Chakra that didn’t belong to them, 

His head spun to his right, his hand taking off the cloth that covered his sharingan simultaneously. His vision grew crimson and he saw everything. 

Nothing. Only a squirrel running to the tree line. The chakra signature disappeared. It felt familiar, but he couldn’t pinpoint who it was. However, there was one thing he was certain of, the chakra was full of malice and hatred, it was frozen over, it sent a chill down his spine.

He scanned the tree line and the field, he looked between every single tree, yet there was nothing. 

Kakshi closed his sharingan and looked to his students, “Naruto, did you feel that?”

The kid was the best sensor out of the four of them, it was in his genes.

“No?”

The answer made him freeze. 

Was he not fully awake? No, that was impossible, Naruto could wake up even from his deepest slumbers if he felt a menacing chakra signature from within 400 metres of where he was resting. So what? Was he going insane?

Was it a phantom feeling? It felt real. And it sent physical repulsion through his body. 

The sun started to rise above the trees. 

It lit them up, there was nothing there. 

“Sasuke, look through the tree line”

Maybe he was too tired, perhaps dual sharingan could catch something.

The boy got up from the warm bed and walked over to the large window, his breath fogged up the glass. Nevertheless, Kakashi saw the reflection of those spinning tomoe and blood red irises. He saw them moving from left to right and back again, they scanned further than his own eye could see.

Sasuke blinked and the red reflection was gone, he turned, jet-black eyes meeting his own.

“There’s nothing”, the boy looked worried. He couldn’t tell if it was for him or for what may lie in the trees.

“I see”

He was faced with confused looks from 3 pairs of eyes. He felt something, now wasn’t the time to be doubting his own skill. 

He walked towards the window and faced them, his team, “I felt chakra from the woods, and I have a feeling that danger is close. I need the three of you to always stay within my sights and range. We aren't in a safe place, I do not know how trustworthy these people are, I have to ask that you guys never let down your guard from now until we get home… don’t die before we get home.”

Kakashi couldn’t lose them, he felt exhausted. He shouldn’t be going against his own words but although they were shinobi, they have not experienced enough to be able to look out for themselves in such an unknown territory. The furthest they have travelled was to Minamiawaji and even then his entire team had nearly died. 

That was a failure on his end as their teacher and captain, they should never have come so close to death on their first mission outside of Konoha. If they were attacked right now and he was incapacitated, they would almost definitely be killed. They didn’t have enough missions under their belt to even be able to tell when they were pushing the limits of their chakra. They didn’t know how to escape T&I or how to sense killing intent hidden under the guise of friendliness. They can’t suppress their emotions nor can they control their expressions.

Those three aren’t enough. They don’t have enough to survive here. 

The thought of being impaired while those three were in danger sent a pang of fear through his heart.

“If you feel anything is off, good or bad, gather together and come to me” 

He was faced with silence.

His eye ran over all three of them, memorising their faces and expressions. Brows furrowed and mouths were scrunched into frowns, fear, worry and foolish inexperienced grit painted their faces. What use was bravery if you were going to die for no reason?

Kakashi stood straighter and filled the room with his chakra, almost suffocatingly. 

His voice was harsh and sobering, “ Do you understand me? ” 

The three nodded in unison.

“ Do. You. Understand? ” he emphasised each word, gazing deep into each of his teams’ eyes after each word.

“Yes”

They replied together. 

Before that strange chakra signature, he didn’t take this world’s danger too seriously, the people here were clearly much weaker than them. But perhaps it wasn’t them that they had to worry about. 

The chances of this being an elaborate genjutsu or even a deadly bloodline limit was starting to be increasingly possible. He couldn’t remember how they came to this world nor what they were doing before they came here, the thought of dimensional travel was starting to sound more ridiculous by the second and Konoha was on the verge of political destruction.

There was something deeper going on that he was missing. 

“Do you remember how we got here or what happened before we came?”He searched for answers in his team.

None of them said anything.

He sat down on the plush chair, “what was the last thing you remember? Sakura you first”

“I- um I was with Ino, helping out at the flower shop for the funeral bouquets, then… I think I left and met up with Naruto but I can’t remember for what”

He looked over to Naruto, “I was talking to the pervy sage about training, then I went to go eat ramen, and I trained a bit then I went to eat ramen again, then uhh I met Sakura but I can’t remember why either”

Sasuke started before Naruto got his last word in, “We met for a mission, you and Sakura were late because you knew Kakashi would be late too but he was already there. I was there too…then we left the village for the short mission, I think” 

A mission? Why couldn’t he remember? 

“Sa-”

Three knocks. All their heads turned to the wooden door on the right. Kakashi stood and walked towards the door slowly. 

“Stay hidden”, he gestured to his team.

He took a peek through the peephole. 

There was a boy there. Maybe a couple years older than his own students, he had off puttingly large eyes and freckles dotted his face. His hair was an odd shade of dark green and he could feel a certain power emanating from this kid. Similar to All Might’s but different, more…concentrated? It was odd, the boy’s power was almost like chakra but less ‘natural’, it felt as if he had multiple different strands of power within him, if it made sense. Almost like varying chakra natures.

He opened the door.

Before it was even fully opened, the boy stuck his foot inside and held out his arm to keep the door open.

The boy’s head turned towards him and his eyes peered into his soul, “What did you do to Mr. Aizawa?”

He couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at his question. This kid didn’t look like he belonged to the ‘Heroes’ he was talking to a couple hours ago. And more importantly he looked to be wearing a uniform of sorts. A soldier? He had to suppress a laugh. Here they were getting on him about making his students shinobi when they looked to be doing the same thing with a kid who looked to be about 13 years old; only a year or two older than his own students.

“What are you doing here, kid?”, clearly the boy was in over his head attempting to question him about things like this. 

“What did you do to my teacher?!”

“He hasn’t woken up?”, hm. That probably wasn’t good. 

Not all hope was lost yet for that guy but it was certainly getting more concerning every passing moment. Normal genin would have woken up maybe an hour after that level of controlled genjutsu, but seeing as how the people here were not exposed to illusions at all he had estimated the man would likely wake up after a day or so. Maybe he had overestimated the mental power of the people here

The boy took another step into the room, “Woken up? What do you mean? Where is he?”

He tilted his head slightly. The boy had no idea of anything, did he?

“It’s none of your business, you should speak to your other teachers before coming to ask me”

Kakashi wondered how this kid even made it to his door. In Konoha, prisons were some of the most well guarded places in a village, even a jonin or two wouldn’t be able to make it through without the proper authority or paperwork. Although…this room seemed more like an inn than a prison cell. But still, surely they would have guarded his team and he more carefully.

“They wouldn’t tell us anything”

He bent over the boy, sticking his head out into the hallway over the boy’s head. Empty, except for a couple pairs of eyes peeking out from the end of the hall. They quickly vanished when he made eye contact.

Did the boy think he was simply a visiting stranger? Why did he confront him with so little care or fear?

He retreated from the doorway and faced the boy again, “Are those your friends? It’s a disgraceful thing, bringing along your friends to a dangerous foe”

Would the boy leave if he scared him?

He placed a hand on the boy's shoulder, “Run along little boy, this isn’t the place for you”

The little push he gave nearly toppled the kid over. But the kid’s shoulder felt as hard as a rock, well built. Only achievable through hard training.

He closed the door on him the second he was a millimetre out of the room. He could tell the kid was still there, staying persistent even behind the closed door, but he ignored it and went back to his team.

Sakura jumped out of the bed and shivered slightly at the temperature, “Kakashi-sensei, who was that?”

“A kid, maybe three years older than you guys”

He had hoped that the person knocking would be Nezu or someone other than a kid. He wanted to get back as quick as possible, should he wait for them to call him out? Or should he search for them. Would these people even be awake so early, the kid that knocked on his door looked like he hadn’t slept the entire night. Maybe the kid could point him in the general direction of his teachers, or at the very least in the direction of a library where he could do research while he waited for the Heroes.

Kakashi walked back towards the door and opened it. He pulled the green haired boy inside before he could even protest. 

Was it a bad idea to ‘kidnap’ a child here? Probably, but it was already day break and he has yet to hear anything from those Heroes. He told them they were in a hurry and clearly they didn't understand just how important it was that they got home on time. They had already spent three days here, who knew how much longer it would take to devise a way to get home. 

The kid pulled away from his grasp with a strength he had yet to see in this world. His palms reddened. He scanned the room and froze when he saw his students.

“Hey, what are you doing with those kids?”

He sighed, this again? “You should have more faith in your ‘Heroes’ don’t you think?”

Granted even if he was going to hurt his students they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. But if they had really tried to separate them from him, he doubted this building would still even be standing. 

“Hey you Brocoli-haired brat, who do you think you’re calling kids?!”

“Naruto”

“You look like you haven't even graduated from the academy!”

“Shut up idiot”

He suppressed a sigh. Instead he sat on the plush bed for the first time and nearly sank to the floor. He pretended not to be surprised at how soft the bedding was. 

The kid was still plastered against the wall opposite to their large bed. Was he fearing for his life right now? Were his friends running to get help from their teachers? Or would they simply abandon him in the mouth of a hound? 

The room was silent as he inspected the kid. From what little skin he showed, he was practically plastered in scars, his hands had barely any unmarked patches of skin left, only his face was seemingly untouched. Though, if he looked closely he could see a light scar reaching from the top of his left eye all the way across his face to his right cheek.

His biceps were well built, the fabric around his arms were stretched. He could comfortably assume the rest of his body was just as sturdy. 

This seemed to be a rarity among civilians and children, from what he had gathered, the Heroes here were like shinobi whereas the civilians were more like untrained people from non shinobi nations. However it seemed that some Heroes relied entirely on their ‘quirk’ rather than their physical body which would lead to a much less honed physique. 

He looked at the boy again, the kid didn’t look to be particularly scared or angry, just maybe nervous and curious.

“What’s your name kid?”

He met his eyes hesitatingly, “Midoriya Izuku”

“Your teacher went poking his nose in someone else’s business and I ‘knocked’ him out for it, he should wake up within three days”

Kakashi didn’t think it would do any good to tell Izuku that with every passing day the chances of his teacher waking up dropped significantly.

“Where is he!? Who - He wouldn’t do- You did something!”

Ballsy wasn’t he? 

From his side a voice was heard, “WE DID SOMETHING!? YOUR GREASY OLD FART OF A TEACHER WAS THE ONE WHO ABDUCTED US!”

He reached a hand back and pushed Naruto back onto the bed, he didn’t need his insights on this.

“He abducted you?” Kakashi paid close attention to Midoriya’s eyes, a thousand thoughts looked to be swimming inside. 

In the shinobi world kidnapping was quite literally one of the most mild crimes a shinobi could commit. Though that's only when it pertains to a mission given by the village. Nobody would have even batted an eyelash if someone told you that your master or teacher kidnapped, killed and tortured a village of enemy shinobi. After all, shinobi lived for their village, to serve and protect. 

And to ensure their village triumphed over others.

While everybody despised the people who attacked them and their village, could they really hold it personal? The shinobi who did horrendous things to the people of Konoha did so under the instruction of their village, as did him and the other shinobi from Konoha. But often, peace of mind is not so easily achieved, Shinobi may have been instructed to do evil deeds by their villages, but that is just a means of justifying those acts. Deep down, many shinobi act not only for their village but also for their own personal goals. 

Revenge and anger ran deep in every shinobi. When your village tells you to slaughter a small community of civilians, you may think twice before dutifully completing the mission. But when the same community of civilians are the same who provided metal and wood to Iwagakure who’s shinobi slaughtered the people in your childhood town, suddenly you no longer think twice about murdering civilians who did what they had to do to survive. Suddenly rather than questioning the order, you blindly follow, even willingly. Driven by revenge and anger for dead friends and family, you slaughter the community with blunt blades and poorly aimed kunai.

Did this kid factor in his personal beliefs of what was right and wrong into his judgement of his teacher? Was he old enough, experienced enough, to understand the complexities in any given situation? Would he blindly follow his teacher and justify his actions without a second thought?

He didn’t think so, from the way the boy avoided his gaze and the way they darted from left to right frantically, perhaps the boy had some brains in that big head of his. 

Although, he seemed awfully quiet. To understand another’s perspective, you must ask them about it. Remaining silent and basking in your own theories of why and how will only drive you mad; he knew from experience. 

He looked down at the kid, “I wanted to ask you, where’s the nearest library?”

“What?”

He didn’t repeat the question.

“We have a school library in building 6”

He paused, “Did you only want to ask me that?”

Kakashi didn’t answer, instead he walked casually over to the door. For a moment everyone thought he would either leave or ask Midoriya to leave.

He pushed the door wide open and in ran both Vlad and Nezu, who was sitting on his shoulder. 

The people of this world may have been lacking chakra networks and chakra altogether, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel the vibrations of their heavy footsteps, or hear the whispers of anger and worry coming from behind the thick wooden door. He didn't need the sharingan to know that the boy’s little friends didn’t and wouldn’t abandon him. As seen by the group of students standing opposite the door beside All Might and the poison’s lady from the previous day.

“Release the boy at once!”

Kakashi suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, he looked over to Midoriya.

His voice was flat and full of sarcasm,“you are released”

He performed a mocking hand gesture similar to the ones street magicians used to reveal their trick. 

Midoriya didn’t move a muscle.

“Well ‘Vlad’ I don’t know what to tell you, but even though I’ve released little Midoriya here, it doesn’t seem like he wants to leave”

He didn’t miss the quiet giggles his students let out. Or more specifically the quiet giggles Sakura let out, the hearty juvenile laugh Naruto gave and the small huff of annoyance Sasuke breathed.

Vlad reached out his arm, blocking him from Midoriya, “Come here boy”

This time he actually did move, only he didn’t take a step forward, rather he turned to face Nezu; or Vlad?

“Mr. Principle, Tell us where Mr. Aizawa is, and…tell us who these people are”

This time it was his turn to laugh. Oh he wondered how the rat was going to answer this one.

He didn’t answer the kid’s question, “All Might, please escort your students back to their dorm, and Midoriya, I will be taking serious disciplinary action against you and your friends.”

From behind Vlad, he saw All Might walking towards them, He grabbed Midoriya by the arm and dragged him out. Along with his posse, Midoriya was forced to leave, All Might pushed against their backs to make them walk to where he assumed would be their dorm. He remembered which direction they left in.

He was pulled back to the conversation by Nezu.

“Hatake, we may be able to tolerate your requests of staying with your ‘team’ however capturing and bringing a UA student into your room is an absurd violation of our trust!”

He didn’t like being called Hatake, it reminded him of his father.

What trust? As if these people really trusted them, “Our trust? Does that extend to the eyes and ears you had on us while my students slept?”

He ignored the jumble of panicked chakra prickling the back of his neck.

He continued, “It doesn’t seem that either of us trust each other much does it? Besides, I didn't do anything to hurt your student whatsoever, which can’t be said for what you did to my own students can it?”

Thinking about what they did to his students pissed him off. That and the fact that he had spent hours going over their story despite having repeated it millions of times already. They were waiting and every second they spent here was a second where the shinobi nations could be plunged into war. If he didn’t make it back, would his own students be forced to fight in a war they didn’t create? Would he lose two of them to the cruelties of war before he could even see them again? Would their bodies be lost among the countless burnt and rotten bodies in the battlefield? The thing is, if he had a choice in anything, he would do everything possible to prevent that reality from coming to fruition. 

So the people here needed to get some sense knocked into them.

“I don’t think you understand just how fucking urgent our return is, so let me make it clear. If we do not get back in time because of your dilly dallying, I will make sure you regret it”

The tense atmosphere could have been sliced with a knife, too bad all he had on him right now were Kunai.

“Was that a threat?”

His eyes shifted from Nezu to Vlad, “Yes, it was”

Kakashi heard the rip of fabric from behind Vlad and the sweet scent of lavender and roses filled his nose. Were they fucking stupid? 

“Futon: Gale palm!”

He clasped his hands together and concentrated the chakra there. He kneaded the chakra into wind and pushed it out through a small hole in the middle of his clasped hands. Right before his eyes, the pink smoke flew backwards and so did Vlad. Although he managed to not topple over. He wasn’t impressed, he used less than half the chakra required for a full powered Gale Palm.

That lady tried to subdue him. She used the exact same technique she used yesterday on his students, did she think he would just lay down and breathe in the poison?

He prepared for an attack, but it never came.

Instead he felt the presence of his students behind him and felt a wave of guilt, anger and sadness behind him. They weren’t any better were they? 

He was losing his mind.

What the hell was he doing? They were rightfully angry at him for taking one of their students, yet he couldn’t suppress the wave of anger he felt when they implied that he would do anything to hurt the boy. 

He knew what it was, and yet he couldn’t do anything to stop it. That guttural feeling of dread and fear had only been getting worse and worse, it was almost crippling. Every move he made he feared for his team. He didn’t dare close his eyes for a moment of rest, he didn’t dare to take a shower or wash his face; every moment he was away from them could mean their inevitable deaths. 

Was it already written in fate that one of them would die? Right now all he wished for was that this feeling was a fluke and that he was just starved or tired or paranoid, but every single fucking time he let himself think that, he was reminded of what this feeling meant the last time he had it. It meant that utter havoc and destruction would unfold. 

That feeling of fear drove him to a corner, where he knew what would happen yet couldn’t do a single thing to stop it. 

The only conceivable way of getting out of the corner was to find a way home, but even then, would their fate have put them in a position where the journey home would cause one or more of them to die? Would they be tricked by the people here into jumping into a machine or mechanism that would kill them instead of transporting them home? 

The panic that filled him when he thought about how utterly inconceivable it was to find a way home from such a predicament was horrible. In his life he had never felt such a sense of panic and hopelessness for his life. And despite all this he needed to stay strong for his team.

He placed his arms by his side and swallowed his pride, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, and I lashed out. I only asked Midoriya where the library was so that I may be able to research how to get home on my own. You can confirm that with the kid”

The tension eased ever so slightly.

“Hatake, there are limits to how much freedom we can allow before locking you up permanently. I can’t say you are forgiven so easily”, Nezu said.

“To be frank, you’ve overstepped your boundaries. But you are also not from this world - which is a groundbreaking thing - We cannot allow you to proceed without additional safety measures being put in place but since you are so adamant about it, we will start research right away” 

Kakashi didn’t like the sound of that, and more importantly he hated being spoken to as if he were a child. Did he overstep the boundaries? Probably. But they didn’t have to sugar coat him getting restraints, and maybe a guard, so much. He shivered at the embarrassment of having his students watch him getting spoken to like this. He felt like he was getting lectured by his academy teacher again.

The rat sighed.

“Come, we’ll bring you to the library, though I can already tell you , that you won’t find anything of use there”

No restraints? He wondered just how lenient the extra security measures they would be given would be. In Konoha they would have executed anyone who attempted to kidnap and question their genin or academy students.

“I would like to decide that on my own”

They proceeded to the library, with him walking in front and Vlad, Nezu and the poison’s lady behind him. He was starting to wonder what was stopping him from just running off but from what he was witnessing it seemed that everyone but Nezu was opposed to letting him walk without restraints. 

He could hear their whispers as clear as day. Though despite the protest, none of them seemed to go beyond just asking why his team and him weren’t restrained. 

Nezu was smarter than he looked. He had yet to reveal his ‘quirk’ and he was the one Kakashi knew least about.

-

They didn’t make it to the library.

“Sasuke”, the boy’s name came out of his mouth almost instinctually.

He stood his ground and pulled his students behind him. 

-

He knew this chakra, he knew it and he could’ve sensed it from a kilometre away. He would know the feeling even if he were blind, deaf and on the verge of death. This was the chakra of the person he had spent countless days and nights fighting beside him. The signature was faint, not because it was weak but rather because the person was so skilled at his chakra control, he could reduce the signature to a wisp of what it really was. Kakashi looked around for him frantically. 

The chakra was familiar, it had a heat to it that belonged only to those of the Uchiha clan. But it also had a coolness to it, one like a slow-flowing river. 

He brought his team in front of him so that he would be able to protect them better, the person they were up against wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter all of them.

“What are you doing Hatake?”

He had forgotten about them. These people would die if they tried to confront him.

“Keep your guard up”, he paused, “Leave if you want to keep your life”

Kakashi couldn’t afford to spare a glance. He told them to keep up their guard, but what use was that against him? Perhaps only a sense of safety was achieved, although he doubted that would last long. He knew they wouldn’t leave, that they would stay because they severely overestimated their power, especially against the foe that they would be going up against.

He brought his hands up to his team’s eyes, “Close your eyes, don’t open them no matter what”

They were nestled together in between his arms, he could feel the sweat collecting on their faces. His own arms were starting to get wet with sweat as well, it soaked through his uniform. 

“Keep your eyes closed” he repeated, this time not only to his students but to the Heroes behind him who were no stronger than a gang of toddlers against the man.

He removed his hands from his team’s faces and pulled up the headband covering his sharingan, still keeping a single arm tightly secured across Sasuke’s chest. He focused his chakra to the eye, he used more than he normally would, and closed his other eye. His eye darted around the open field and the cobblestone path, nothing. But he could feel it more clearly now, the chakra of an Uchiha, one who had achieved the Mangekyou Sharingan and honed his combat prowess to levels he could only dream of.

Where was he? 

“Tell us what’s happening, Hatake!”

Vlad needed to shut the hell up, “Just close your eyes and trust me!”

“I like mysterious men and you, my dear, are particularly handsome, but there is such a thing as too little information, you know?”, the poison’s lady.

They weren’t taking this seriously at all, the only person who hadn’t voiced their ignorance about the situation was the rat.

Couldn’t they feel it? The killing intent covering the field was stifling. He could feel every single shake and shiver of fear his students did. They were perfectly scared at his murderous intent yesterday night, and yet they show no fear for this? What was going on? 

The back of his neck stung and he felt eyes on him from every angle. 

Fuck. He needed to get his team out of here. But he couldn’t let them leave by themselves without risking their lives, he doubted he was here just to fight him.

“Calm down, tell us what’s happening Kakashi”, Nezu asked.

He didn’t respond.

The rat spoke again, “Sakura, what’s happening?”

She only shook in response. 

They trusted him enough to know how serious the situation was if it warranted him panicking.

-

Was he after Sasuke?

Had he come to finish the job after all these years?

-

No, the man wasn’t as unrefined as jumping entire worlds just to kill someone who could have been dead for all he knew. The Uchiha was after Naruto, or more specifically the nine tails. Did he want to harness its powers? 

“Kakashi-sensei, something’s coming”, it was Naruto. If he said something was coming then it would be here, within the minute.

He was expanding too much chakra trying to look for him, there was no use, if he didn’t want to be found then he wouldn’t be. 

Kakashi really needed his team to work with him right now, “Listen, I can’t afford to take care of you. Don’t interfere, that’s an order . I will knock every one of you guys out if you don’t heed my instructions. Do you understand? ”

He shifted to his other eye. 

Again from behind him those foolish Heroes spoke, “There no one here, Hatake! Have you finally lost it!?” 

He felt a gust of cold wind blow against him, it was too cold for this time of year.

The words sent stakes through their bodies,“No one here? You should refocus your gaze, I suggest you leave now, my business isn’t with you”

Kakashi’s heart dropped to his stomach, he needed to get his students away. His mind raced to find a way to remove them from this situation, there was none. So, instead he held them closer, nearly crushing them within his arms. His feet were planted to the ground.

 “Kakashi, I won’t waste your time, Hand over the nine-tails” his voice was smooth and honeyed. 

It hasn’t changed at all in the last 4 years, the only thing different about him was his height and physique, no longer did he have a child-like body and features, no he was a full grown man now. He was just a bit shorter than Kakashi himself now, his shoulders were broader and his face was more hollow and solemn. His eyes looked deadlier yet less ‘focused’, that was odd. They spun with three tomoe surrounding his pitch black iris. 

His voice was still as calm and smooth as the last time they met. He never strained his voice or deepened it, he had an uncanny ability to intimidate enemies with just his words. Words that were never harsh or brash, words which had a politeness that was uncommon in the shinobi world, signalling his high-born birth.

Kakashi’s arm tightened around Sasuke and he used his hands to cover the boy’s eyes. He could feel Sasuke straining against him, trying to get out of his grasp to see his brother.

“How did you get here?”, he masked his panic.

He needed to buy time. For what? He had no idea. What he needed was for his students to stay put or go to a safe location, but unfortunately likely only one would conform to his command. One would want revenge and another would want to stop his friend from suicide.

Itachi didn’t answer.

He whispered to his team and to Saskue, “You are no match for him right now, I need you to know that and I need you to stay here. If you go after him, Sasuke, you will die”

Without another word, he pushed his team in a single motion to the heroes standing behind him. They weren’t closing their eyes at all. And with them, neither was Sasuke. He spotted the red eyes on Sasuke.

“ Restrain him! ”, he didn’t know who he was talking to, the heroes? Naruto and Sakura? Probably both. If Sasuke activated his curse mark he would break through all of them and any restraint he put on the kid. 

Did he need to knock out Sasuke? He didn’t have the luxury of time to do that. If he took his eyes off of Itachi, the man would disappear. He would simply have to place his faith in Naruto’s ability to talk his friend out of stupid situations. 

Itachi’s gaze didn’t falter from his own. 

Despite him showing up, Kakashi still felt uneasy. The chakra he had sensed earlier this morning, was it his? Why didn’t he recognise it then? It was familiar but in a different way than Itachi’s, it was old and withered. But it was familiar.

His mind was brought back to reality when Itachi spoke, “Don’t waste my time Kakashi”

He activated his sharingan again, things were about to get serious and he couldn’t afford even one misstep.

-

From the shadows he watched. It took a long time to locate them, and an even longer amount of time to figure out how to transport Itachi and himself to this world. 

He wondered whether he should end them here, he couldn’t get rid of the Uchiha boy but the girl and Kakashi were fair game. And it would certainly make his future plans easier to carry out. Itachi wouldn’t need help, so he watched.

He watched from the roofs of one of the buildings, he watched as Kakashi fought desperately to regain control of a situation that already had an ending.

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, shattered?”

It was hard to suppress the wave of killing intent that exited his body. The only reason he was able to not completely melt those pitiful bastards on the spot was because he didn’t want his team to be put off by the killing intent. He needed them to be combat ready.

The man - the one who had tried to investigate him with a sorry excuse for T&I - grabbed his team. He tried to jump away with his team. Isn’t that funny? If he wasn’t so angry he would have laughed. The man tried to jump away with Kakashi of the Sharingan’s team. Pathetic excuse for a soldier, that’s what he was.

He didn’t exert himself. 

Kakashi grabbed his team from the man who was jumping away. Sakura and Sasuke were tucked under his right arm and Naruto his left. He placed them down quickly onto the wet soil. Naruto’s ankle was completely mangled. He could already feel the familiar heat of the Nine-tails’ chakra starting to seep from his body.

Generally, he didn’t bother using the sharingan to perform such a simple genjutsu. Actually, often, he didn’t even use it for control over his more complex genjutsus; when dealing with enemies of Konoha, Kakashi didn’t bother trying to keep their brains functional after a genjutsu.

But this time, seeing as how weak and pathetic the people here were, he lifted the hitai-ate covering Obito’s sharingan.

He honestly didn’t care much about what happened to the man’s brain and bodily functions, but he wanted to be able to dig deep enough to ‘see’ everything, and to understand everything - also on the off chance that the man had the potential to be an ally, it would do him good not to kill him.

How easily the man got caught in a D-rank genjutsu, that most genins could resist, irked him. It made him feel like he was playing with a glass doll. If he didn’t have the sharingan, he’d have to exert much more patience and control than he currently had to make sure the guy at least had a chance at waking up.

It was over from there. 

The battle was settled before it even started. 

They were fucking weaklings. He could fight all of them at once with his hands behind his back. Pathetic. 

Naruto’s ankle was getting worse, perhaps the seal didn't let out enough of the Nine-tails’ chakra…He kept his sharingan on the man, it really was pathetic. It didn’t take much to get the answers he needed. The man couldn’t even stay conscious after he was released from the illusion.

Kakashi didn’t bother keeping an eye on the ‘heroes’ - the word felt foreign on his tongue. He reached into his back pouch and pulled out a small bag of smelling salts. He bent down slowly, placing the foul smelling bag underneath Sasuke’s nose. 

He had been working on improving the other two’s combat prowess and general shinobi skills, but they still held nothing to Sasuke. It was expected, he supposed. Sasuke was born into the head family of the Uchiha, he likely learnt how to kill before he could even say his first words. He was the easy choice in this situation, he could protect the team and had enough combat sense to know when and where to run.

Sasuke woke up quickly, he came to focus even faster. 

“Sasuke, bring Naruto and Sakura aside, make sure you aren't outside my range”

The boy didn’t waste any time picking up his comrades and bringing them out of the field of battle. Kakashi closed Obito’s eye and pulled the hitai-ate over it. The man was being cradled by that woman now, the poison’s master…although she seemed to be a pretty shit one at that. What kind of poison was so easily woken up from using simple smelling salts? What kind of poison didn’t kill?

He would be lying if he said he wasn’t worried when he saw his students unconscious. Generally poisons in the elemental nations were lethal, occasionally they only maimed and sometimes, if you were lucky,  they’d leave you with most of your bodily functions intact. 

But he supposed they weren’t in the elemental nations, were they?

Kakashi would like to think he had a pretty good head on him, and he’d also like to think he’d seen everything. Of course, it seemed only the former was true. His best guess is that he had accidentally moved them here, into a different world, with Kamui. How else would they have made it here otherwise? Kamui was the most powerful space-time ninjutsu that existed.

A different world. The thought was so…so…appalling. 

He had thought about it on the way here. His first conclusion was that they were in a genjutsu, but as he observed the world around him, he really started to doubt it. 

Unless their genjutsu user also happened to be an artist, he doubted any shinobi would spend so much time creating such a world. It was just too different from the elemental nations. Besides, the best genjutsu users he knew of didn’t waste chakra on creating entire worlds - they focused more on the combat and T&I possibilities of it.

He tilted his head slightly, sparing a glance at his team. An idea flashed in his mind.

Kakashi dug out the same bag of smelling salts from his pouch, tossing it to Sasuke.

“Sasuke! Ask Sakura to heal Naruto’s ankle,” he jumped up slightly to catch the pouch.

Cute.

This would be a great teaching opportunity. It’d give Sakura on field medical experience that he hadn’t had the opportunity to give her yet.

The woman who cradled that ‘hero’, stood up, “HEY WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM, YOU BASTARD?”

His eyes turned into crescents, his mouth remained the same, “Nothing he can’t handle” If he wasn’t a weakling.

He had tried his best not to damage too many neurons after he found out the weakling didn’t hurt Naruto. 

Kakashi watched as the people opposite him grew even more tense. 

There was a rat among them, it was pretty odd, in his opinion, for such a large rat to have such a high intellect. He knew from digging around in the weakling’s brain that the rat was a principal of a ‘Hero’ Academy. He didn’t spend much time in his brain but he got the gist of where they were and how things worked in this world.

Kakashi could admire their peace, the weakling hadn’t seen war. And he already seemed pretty old. 

This kind of peace was what his master had wanted to achieve. It was the kind that would never be achieved, at least not in his generation. Perhaps if Naruto really held to his word and became Hokage, he could instil this kind of peace. The kid was like his father, he’d have the power to force peace onto the world, Kakashi wouldn’t even put it past him to be able to get all the Kages to willingly be at peace - he had so much potential.

But one thing he couldn’t get around was the shinobi system here, or he supposed the ‘Hero’ system. Heroism isn’t something they teach in the Elemental Nations, that kind of thinking was reserved for either Legendary Shinobi or suicidal ones. None of whom were very common. He doubted it would ever be taught, perhaps instilled for comrades but never outright taught.

“I suggest you submit now and hand yourself in, if you don’t, All Might is coming and he will not hesitate to capture you by force”, the rat said.

“The most powerful man here, right?”

The group seemed surprised, not that he knew of All Might, but because he didn’t buckle at the warning. He supposed to them, this All Might was akin to the fourth Hokage, a living legend. He would be surprised too if an enemy didn’t piss their pants at a warning that the Yellow Flash of the Leaf was going to enter battle.

Kakashi sighed and relaxed himself. He didn’t like the people here, after all, they separated him from his team. Even then, he wouldn’t hurt their peace. He didn’t have any business in this world, he had no right to go around starting fights…no matter how much killing intent was radiating from him right now.

He sighed, “We’ll be leaving now”

Before he could jump to his team, the rat interrupted.

“We can’t let you do that”

He sighed. A debt must be paid, he supposed.

Kakashi tilted his head, “Do you want me to wake him up?” he pointed at the weakling.

Like he said, he didn’t have business in this world. Perhaps he had been a bit too harsh on the people here. They pissed him off, but from what he saw in the weakling’s mind, they did treat his team in a hospital of sorts. He could spare a bit of chakra to heal the guy.

Although…whether it worked or not was really a gamble.

He definitely had experience healing a broken mind. After all, when Obito was a genin his control over his sharingan’s genjutsu was absolute dog shit. When Rin wasn’t around and push came to shove, he’d heal whoever they were interrogating enough that Obito could dig into their mind again. Of course, none of them survived past the interrogation, but that was all Obito, not him. 

Kakashi would like to think his medical ninjutsu had improved since he was in team Minato.

“What did you do to him?”

The rat was stalling. He could tell that much.

“Do you want me to heal him, or not? If not, my shinobi and I will be leaving”

The rat didn’t answer, instead he looked as if he were analysing him. He laughed at the thought. The last guy who had tried died because of how long he took. 

Kakshi took a lazy step towards his team.

Sakura and Sasuke were sitting patiently, waiting for him. Naruto’s ankle no longer looked so grotesque and now had white bandages wrapped around it. From this distance he could see how neatly Sakura had wrapped up his ankle. She had been practising.

“Wait!”, the rat called out.

Kakashi didn’t wait. He continued his lazy stroll towards his team, at least until a huge, smooth, stone wall blocked his way. It rose up from the ground and grew until it was triple his height.

He clenched his jaw, he didn’t bother hiding his killing intent. 

He saw the way the group struggled not to buckle under the weight. 

Kakashi broke down the wall with his own earth style, it disintegrated into dirt. He attempted to continue to his team when the sickeningly sweet smell of lavender and chamomile assaulted his nose, he summoned a wind release and blew away the fog. Pathetic. Every single thing they tried against him was starting to piss him off even more.

“Are you done?” He tried to keep calm.

As he expected, they weren’t done. A blade of what he assumed was blood came flying towards him…and here he thought the ‘Heroes’ here weren’t allowed to kill. His kunai intercepted the blade with ease, he turned his body to face them.

He didn’t like the way his own team was bending to his killing intent, but those heroes just…they just didn’t stop . One after another they came at him like fucking flies. It felt like fighting academy students, only bigger and clumsier. They didn’t coordinate well, their ‘powers’ didn’t work with each other. 

One after the next, he deflected and deflected and deflected. With each deflection, he felt his annoyance grow. 

And of course they were stalling. 

For All Might, he assumed.

As much as he didn’t like to admit it, as weak as their physical combat prowess and teamwork was, it didn’t make their powers any less troublesome to deal with. It was like dealing with Itachi’s tsukuyomi, even if he didn’t try, that didn’t mean he couldn’t kill with just a glance. Although…he supposed that analogy laid more with Itachi’s own genius and skill with genjutsu.

A more accurate analogy would be if you gave a civilian the Nine-tails. It was a powerful power, but it wouldn’t be used to its full potential in the hands of someone who didn’t know how to use chakra. 

These ‘heroes’ may not have had skill, but they were experienced. He could tell as much by the way they timed their attacks. They kept their attacks to a wide area around him, meaning he wouldn’t be able to move closer to his team, not without putting them in danger. 

Only...they put too much trust in thinking that he would coddle his team like the people here did with their ‘Hero’ students. 

Their attacks had potency and their timing was precise. But, one, they didn’t hurt ‘children’ here, and two, it was good evasion practice for Sasuke and Sakura.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have time to call them in to start their practice when an overwhelming force crashed down on him. 

It wasn’t killing intent, or any form of overpowering chakra. It was just his instincts flaring to insanity. It made his heart beat faster and his feet lighter. He was coming, wasn't he? Suddenly all the attacks stopped.

Kakashi had the sense to back away from his team.

Before his feet touched the ground, he was faced with a fist coming straight to his face. 

Fuck.

Kakashi prepared for the blow. 

It never came.

-

Yagi Toshinori had faced a lot of things in all his years as a hero. He faced villains that could control the blood in your body, he faced villains that had skin harder than concrete and he faced villains that were so terrifying they were erased from history.

What he had never faced before, however, was an immovable wall.

His power, his fist, his quirk, was an indomitable force. Even All for One couldn’t block his punches. The villain simply absorbed them.

So when he was faced with what felt like an immovable mountain, the only reasonable action was to push more strength into the punch.

He was strong, and no one could stop his blows.

.

.

.

He was an indomitable force, at least he had thought so.

The mountain was unyielding. It felt as if he were fighting against a force of nature, as if he were facing an obstinate wall that refused to bend or break or dent. The man’s strength against his blow was like an unquenchable fire, he didn’t budge. 

The sound that came from the exchange of blows made his ears bleed. 

-

Obito never got over his habit. 

The only time he ever came on time, or early, was when it was to meet with Rin. And unfortunately for Kakashi, Rin wasn’t here with him. 

The sound reverberated through the air, it was a thunderous strike. Like a divine whip was cracked against the heavens, tearing it open. The vibrations the block made rippled through the air. The ground underneath their feet shook.

Kakashi had to cushion his ears from the sound using chakra. 

He could see the blood dripping out of the heroes’ ears.

The trees behind him shook with the pure force of the blow. 

He used chakra to keep his feet stuck to the soil. 

To the side, away from the action, Sasuke and Sakura covered their ears while they hugged Naruto’s head tightly in between their bodies. At the very least that teamwork he had tried so hard to drill into them was working.

It was deafening. 

And then it was over. 

Other than the three of them and maybe one or two heroes from the group, everyone else was incapacitated from the sheer force and volume of the blow. 

Obito’s feet touched the ground and space was made.

All Might jumped back to his comrades while Obito and he stayed.

“Fucking hell”

The sleeves covering his forearms grew darker, it was hard to tell with the dark fabric, but he was bleeding. Kakashi could smell the scent of iron in the moist air.

He stood straighter, “You’re late…and your chakra control needs work”

There was a moment of silence.

Obito clicked his tongue, “Shut the hell up, Kakashi. You’re lucky I came before that shit hit your pretty face. How am I even supposed to cushion fully so fast anyway? The moment I Kamuied here, a fist was coming straight at my face!”

Kakashi breathed out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. It was sort of comforting that Obito was here. He hadn’t wanted to think about it until he got his team together, but before Obito, they really didn’t have a fool-proof way to get back to the Elemental Nations. The thought of being stranded here put him off.

“You’d think the man that Master chose to groom to be the next Hokage would be better at blocking a punch than that”, Kakashi pointed at his now dripping sleeves.

Obito’s eye twitched, “You know, I could have easily become intangible right? The only reason you’re still conscious is because your great and merciful future Lord Hokage decided to tank that blow for you…what? Was he too fast for you?”

Kakashi ignored his jest, he was just trying to rile him up.

“What are you even wearing?”

Obito wore a high collared, long sleeved, black top that extended down to his thighs. The loose sleeves dripped blood onto the soil. He didn’t seem the least bit affected by the pain. The last time he had seen him in any other outfit outside his Jonin uniform was…well, before he was made a Jonin of the Leaf.

“You know, I have clothes other than the uniform”, he looked Kakashi up and down as if the Jonin uniform he was wearing was some sort of insult, “Actually, I was supposed to be meeting with Ri-” 

“ Enough !”

It was All Might. From everything he had seen in the weakling’s brain, the man always had a smile plastered on his face…it irked him that it was missing now. Instead his mouth was curled into a frown. 

Creepy.

Obito didn’t seem to hear him, “-n. When I was so rudely interrupted by news of you and your team’s disappearance”. He turned his nose up to the air, “Sages, Kakashi, can you tone down the killing intent. You’re scaring your genin”

Kakashi clenched his jaw, he didn’t realise how bad it’d gotten. He slowed his breathing and tried to control it, pushing the blood lust down.

“Do you know how much chakra I wa-”

-

All Might didn’t make it far.

He jumped forwards, meaning to attack Obito and him again. This time he was prepared, and unfortunately for the ‘hero’, he only moved about as fast as a low Jonin. Obito blocked him with ease.

Kakashi watched as his eye bled red and he stared into the hero.

“ Stop interrupting ”

All Might ignored him and attempted a kick to his side. Obito brought up his leg, blocking the kick. A resounding boom echoed through the open field, the trees shifted and leaves flew through the sky. Obito’s sandaled foot sunk into the wet soil.

The people here were rather stupid weren’t they? He wondered if they were ever thought to run when facing an enemy too strong for them. He wondered if it was just pure arrogance born of the fact that he was apparently the strongest man in ‘Japan’. Either way, he was fighting a losing battle.

Obito clicked his tongue as he continued blocking punches and kicks from all angles.

“Hey, I’m getting sick of this”

He threw a punch to All Might’s stomach.

It was a lazy one, Kakashi could tell only because he’d seen the kind of punches Obito threw when he was serious. The ‘hero’ managed to block him with a palm. It didn’t stop him from sliding all the way back to where the group of ‘heroes’ were. 

Obito sighed and rubbed the back of his head, “Thank you very much for your kind reception, but we’ll be going now”

All Might only jumped forwards again, this time making a grab for Obito’s top and throwing him back, towards the heroes. The shinobi didn’t so much as stumble.

“I don’t have time for this”, he sighed, rubbing his face.

“No, you will not be going anywhere other than Tartarus.” He gestured to Kakashi’s team, “Those children are under my protection”

Kakashi clenched his jaw and felt the blood lust escape his body again. ‘His’ protection? HIS protection? This man had a death wish, and Kakashi would gladly be Fate’s servant. 

Obito laughed loudly at the hero, “You hear that Kakashi?”

Kakashi stayed silent, biting his tongue.

Obito’s face became serious as his smile melted away, “They’re Konohagakure’s shinobi, not children, and they are under the Hokage’s protection. Do you know what that means, you big block-head? It means that they are under our protection, as Jonin of the Leaf”

He tilted his head slightly, “And…you should be careful when saying stuff like that…they don’t belong to you. They belong to Konoha…that means they belong to me ”

Kakashi watched as All Might’s frown twisted into a scowl, he could practically feel the anger radiating out from the hero.

“ They belong to no one ”

All Might took a step towards him, “You’re the most disgusting and demented villains I’ve ever laid my eyes on. You will not be leaving this battle. Those children will remain safe in our protection, I will not ever rest their lives in the palms of your hands! For as long as I live, I vow that you will never lay a hand on them again”

-

For anyone other than Rin and him, Obito’s smile would have looked friendly, playful even. But he had spent decades beside the man. He didn’t miss the way his smile didn’t reach his eye, he didn’t miss the way his brows furrowed and the way his chakra sharpened. 

His sharingan spun into a pattern and suddenly Kakashi’s own killing intent was dwarfed and swallowed up by the Uchiha’s own killing intent. Obito didn’t get angry easily, but it was his job. It was his job to protect the people of Konoha. After Minato finished his term, the people of Konoha’s lives would rest in his palm.

‘ Those children’ , belonged to Konoha. Those children were Genin of Konoha, they belonged to the fourth Hokage, and that meant they were under Obito’s protection. Any threat to undermine his authority over them was a direct insult to the Fourth Hokage. And any insult to the Fourth Hokage was an insult to him.

Obito was pissed.

-

He avoided death by a hair’s breadth.

The only reason All Might had lived was because of Obito’s longing for peace. The Kunai was aimed for the Hero’s head. Kakashi blocked it with his own. If this world’s Yellow Flash was killed it would spark villainy in their world. As much as he detested the people here, there are always innocents. Civilians, children, they would be caught in the crosshairs.

Obito’s sharingan spun to look at him when his kunai was intercepted. It bothered him, seeing Obito look at him with such a look. It reminded him of that night…the night he almost killed Rin. Kakashi didn’t like being the focus of his anger, it put him off.

Obito reached slowly for his back pocket, continuing to glare at him, as if warning him not to interrupt this time. 

Kakashi didn’t waste any time, “Not him!”

They shared a gaze for a moment, he knew Obito would understand. They were teammates, they were brothers. Obito would understand…although he may be pissed about it.

His mouth morphed into a scowl as he retracted his hand from his back pocket. His gaze shifted from him to All Might. Kakashi almost pitied the man, after all, being the focus of Obito’s rage wasn’t an easy thing to withstand.

Kakashi saw the way his muscles tensed underneath that skintight, eyesore, of a suit.

A kunai flew through the air, faster than anyone without a visual prowess could see. It nicked All Might’s neck and buried itself into a tree to the left of Kakashi.

“We’re leaving . We have no business here”

Obito walked through him, he saw how All Might tried to suppress the shiver that ran through his body.

For a moment everyone was still, the field was completely silent, save for the light rustling of trees.

The heroes on the other side of the field were completely collapsed now, they sat on the floor like the useless soldiers they were. They sat there and goggled at Obito with fear plastered on their faces. He could see, even without Obito’s sharingan, the way hair plastered to their faces with sweat. He could see how their bodies shook in fear - like children.

Obito, leaked killing intent as he walked towards him, “Kakashi”

“Yeah”

He looked over to Sasuke and Sakura, nodding at them as a signal to follow. The two stood quickly, Sasuke carried Naruto on his back.

-

He watched in annoyance, and slight amusement, as All Might tried to make a grab for Obito’s collar again, this time instead of grabbing it, his hand passed through Obito completely. The Hokage's protégé didn’t so much as stumble, he continued walking towards Kakashi. 

All Might leapt forwards and made a grab for his team, the Hero didn’t make it halfway. He was faced with two fully matured Sharingan, leaking killing intent into his very soul.

The man jumped back instinctively, Kakashi had to give it to him. He was surprised the man hadn’t pissed his pants on the spot.

“Mind your business… Hero ”

The word left a foul taste on his tongue.

The world stilled as they were sucked into Obito’s Kamui, the world swirled around them until it became a distant mirage. He knew he was home when he felt the familiar hum of chakra radiating from the Hashirama trees that surrounded Konoha.

_______

Yagi Toshinori didn’t sleep for the next two days.

He had let them escape.

He had let them escape.

Those children. He let them fall into those villains’ palms again. They disappeared, just like that. They had disappeared because he was too afraid to keep moving forward. They were taken because he leapt back, away from them. 

He spent the two days at the police station, and in UA’s security room. He combed through every second of the footage they had of the two villains and the children.

The white-haired one, he had an illusion quirk - from what Aizawa had said. Illusion quirks weren’t rare but they weren’t common either. An illusion quirk that was powerful enough to do what the man had done to Aizawa didn’t exist, if it did, it wasn’t registered.

Tha black-haired one, he had a teleportation quirk. Teleportation was less common than illusion. There were only about 250 people in Japan that had that quirk. None of whom looked remotely similar to the man, with a single crimson eye and scars running all over the right side of his body.

Then he searched for the children.

He started with the girl. Even in a world full of quirks, her hair and eye colour was rare. In fact, he had never seen the combination of pink and green before. He searched the police database for missing children around the ages of 11-14 for her. He found nothing. Kayama had told him she probably had a healing quirk, but it didn’t help his search.

The other two boys were the same. They had much more common hair and eye colours and their quirks were unknown. Despite that, he viewed every single picture of every single boy that had roughly the same description of them. He found nothing.

They burned him from the inside out.