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Everything happens too fast. Usually it’s the opposite, usually everything is much too slow. But Kakashi’s heart is beating too fast and there’s too much blood and Rin is alive but Obito is almost dead. Even though he’s no longer below the rocks he’s still almost dead, and Sensei can’t heal Obito, and Rin can stop some bleeding, but not much more than that, and—
Kakashi shouldn’t care so much, really. They’re still in the field, he needs to be calm, like a good shinobi. He needs to calm his breathing and even his heart rate and think. He feels stupid, right now, he feels dumb. (Is this how normal people think all the time? He can’t stand it.)
Sensei looks worried, even if he’s so obviously trying to hide it. Around them lay dead Iwa shinobi, their blood still a vivid red, fresh enough to not be dulled. And that’s good, there’s no immediate threat, not anymore. (Sensei came in time—why did Sensei come? Did he think Kakashi wouldn’t be competent? New information, maybe? Does it even matter?)
“Obito,” Rin starts, then stops, pauses, bites at her lip. “Is he—?”
“He...isn’t dead yet,” Sensei says, tone gentle, a bit lost. And Obito isn’t dead yet but Kakashi knows enough about the human body to know that he’s going to die soon. Half his body is crushed.
“Konoha is too far,” Kakashi says, and tries not to wonder where Obito’s grave would be placed. Would Kakashi be allowed to visit if it were inside the Uchiha district? “We won’t make it back in time.”
Rin shoots him a glare. “We will. If we hurry—”
“If we hurry,” Kakashi interrupts, “then Obito’s condition gets much worse, and he dies before we get there. And if we go slow and steady he also dies before we get there.”
Sensei winces, shifts Obito around in his arms.
“We can’t just give up,” Rin says, and she looks like she wants to cry, or maybe punch Kakashi, but she doesn't do either. Instead she straightens up and wipes at her eyes and says, “What about Hiraishin?”
That—might actually work. Kakashi’s only seen Sensei use it on himself, but in theory, with enough chakra and control and adjustment, it should be able to transport all of them.
Evidently, Sensei realizes this too, because his eyes widen just a bit, and he gets that look on his face that means he’s deep into theory that even Kakashi doesn't quite understand yet.
“Maybe,” Sensei says, but he still looks worried. “I haven’t tested it with so many people. Hiraishin is a space time jutsu, if it went wrong...”
They shouldn’t risk Konoha’s Yellow Flash, a budding medic, and a genius for one good-for-nothing idiot Uchiha that actively breaks rules on missions. They shouldn’t, they really, shouldn’t, but—
“Okay,” Kakashi says, and Rin nods.
Sensei closes his eyes, opens them. “Okay,” he says, and beckons then to hold onto his arms. They do. “Okay,” Sensei says, again, and the world snaps.
It folds in on itself, and they blink through an empty space and into somewhere bright and light, with tiled flooring and colorful people and—oh. This isn’t Konoha.
Hiraishin went wrong.
All limbs intact. Normal chakra flow. Rin looks kind of nauseous, Obito is still unconscious, and Sensei’s growing steadily paler. Everything tilts off balance as Sensei collapses onto the floor, and—
“Chakra exhaustion,” Sensei manages, and squeezes his eyes shut. “Shit. We’re—another dimension. Wrong one. Don’t be hostile, Kakashi—”
“Okay,” Kakashi says, and his voice comes out flat and numb. “It’s okay. I can—” he can do—something. He can handle this. He’s smart enough for this. It isn’t hopeless.
“Sorry,” Sensei says, and his eyes rolls back, and he also loses consciousness. Rin looks at Sensei worriedly.
Okay, Kakashi thinks, breathes in, breathes out, and surveys where they’ve landed. Alright.
-
Aizawa’s day was going terribly, even before the blood-covered clump of people drop out of no where onto the floor of his classroom.
They appear in a sharp flash of light and clatter onto the tiling. Aizawa immediately goes on high alert, any thoughts of sleep banished. He’s exhausted, bone-deep tired, but fuck. He isn’t going to be anything but razor-edge sharp right now. With everything going on, with the League of Villains and his students—
The light fades out, and the first thing he sees is a tall, blonde man. He’s wearing a long white garb with red patterning, and there’s something dark and rusty in his arms. Someone, Aizawa realizes, with a little bit of horror, that bundle is a person, a child, by the size.
There are two other people. One with brown hair cut into a bob and purple marking across her cheeks, and the other with a face mask and a shock of silver hair. And they’re—children. They’re children. The silver-haired one looks younger than Aizawa’s students, fuck.
But—this is still dangerous. His first priority now is his students. Aizawa rushes over, getting there just as the tall blonde starts rapidly paling. He’s only able to catch something about dimension, and hostile and Kakashi.
“Okay,” the silver haired one says, accent thick, sounds kind of strange, but still vaugly recognizable as Japanese. “It’s okay. I can—”
“Sorry,” the blonde says, and collapses onto the floor. He is, Aizawa notes, careful to keep the injured child from being too jostled.
It’s all even worse up close, really. Even from seven tiles away the smell of blood and dirt and something a bit like gunpowder, but not quite, is terribly potent and almost nauseating. Up close their clothing looks a whole lot like something geared towards combat—the blonde is wearing what looks like some kind of military uniform. And they’re all wearing metal headband printed with a symbol Aizawa doesn’t recognize.
(An identifier? Of some kind? Is there some kind of underground organization that uses that symbol? Why are they children—)
His students, right. His priority right now is damage control and his students.
“Iida,” he says, and is careful to keep his voice calm and even, “bring everyone out of here, call a lock down of this building. Everyone else, get out.”
He doesn't turn around to see, but he can imagine the way Iida has no doubt straightened up.
“Understood!” Iida says, and he can hear shuffling. The class is remarkably, blessedly, silent.
The silver haired boy, shifts his attention from the blonde and onto Aizawa. He narrows his eyes, positions himself squarely in front of the girl and the blonde. Aizawa carefully begins to take a step forward but—
In an instant, in just half a beat, a blade thunks its way into the stone tiling by his boot. The blade—a knife that vaguely resembles ancient Japanese kunai—cuts right through the stone. He freezes.
Sharp, Aizawa thinks, and not only is it sharp, it’s also been thrown with perfect precision and a great deal of strength.
“Don’t step past that point,” the boy says, eyes narrow. “Next it’ll go through your foot, and after that your neck.”
“Kakashi,” the girl hisses, “Sensei said no hostility.”
Sensei, Aizawa notes. She’s probably referring to the blonde. The only adult.
The boy—Kakashi—flicks his eyes over to the girl for just half a beat before training them back on Aizawa. “...Do you think yourself the optimal candidate for deescalation and non-hostile negotiations?”
Surprise crosses over the girl’s face, her eyes widen a bit, she opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, “Yes.”
“Okay,” Kakashi says, and steps back a tiny bit. Although he doesn’t lose his combat-ready posture.
The girl straightens, forms her expression and steps forward. She stares Aizawa right in the eye. His skin pricks uncomfortably. He doesn't like this. He doesn't like any of this. His students are possibly in danger and there are children on his classroom floor, covered in blood and holding weapons, and the only other adult is passed out on the floor.
“Excuse us,” the girl says, “we made a bad first impression. We don’t mean harm, really. Truthfully we didn’t even mean to come here.”
“...Right,” Aizawa says, and she doesn't seem like she’s lying, but UA isn’t somewhere that you just end up. “How’d you get here, then? Where did you come from? Who are you?”
Kakashi shifts, eyes him sharply, and Aizawa can almost feel the hostility.
The girl attempts a smile, but it comes out more like a grimace. “My name is Rin, his name is Kakashi, and our sensei, the blonde, is Minato. Our other comrade...he’s Obito. And you’re..?”
“Aizawa,” Aizawa answers, and narrows his eyes. “But that doesn’t answer my questions.”
“Ahaha,” Rin says, pauses, then shakes her head. “Apologies, we’re still on edge. We just came from an active warzone, so.” That needs more explanation, that really needs more explanation. “Obito got crushed by a boulder and we needed to get home to a hospital fast, and we tried using space-time manipulation to get there, but...” she laughs a little bit. “Well.”
Aizawa isn’t paid enough for this.
“You mean to say that you’re from another dimension?”
Rin blinks at him, look a little confused. “...Yes? I know dimensional travel is hard to achieve, but it shouldn’t be too hard to understand.”
Well, Aizawa thinks, if she isn’t lying, then I guess that’s proof of other dimensions.
“It’s just a theory here,” he says.
Kakashi raises a brow at him, looking supremely unimpressed. “It’s common knowledge.”
“Really,” Aizawa says, voice bland. “Well, here it’s common sense that children don’t belong on the battlefield.” Because he isn't going to just—just forget that.
Rin looks confused. So does Kakashi.
“...Sir?” Rin says, tone questioning. “I’m fourteen already.”
God. Aizawa was kind of hoping they just looked really young.
“And the international minimum in this world is seventeen with parental consent and eighteen without,” Aizawa says, voice dry.
Kakashi blinks a little. “That’s inefficient.”
Rin nods. “Even a civilian would think that’s ridiculous...”
“Would they,” Aizawa says, and wow. Somehow every word they speak paints a worse picture. “How is it in your country, then?”
She hums. “Well the standard is twelve, but right now it’s wartime, so whenever the person manages to graduate, really. So usually eleven.” She brightens, gestures at Kakashi. “He’s an actual genius! He managed to graduate at five! He was on the front lines before I even graduated...”
Aizawa kind of feels a little sick. She says it like it’s a good thing.
“That’s—okay,” he says, “okay. let’s put that aside. You said someone needs a hospital..?”
Rin straightens up, and something like hope sets into her expression. “Yeah. Obito. He’s—he’s...” she gestures at the limp corpse-looking child in the blonde—Minato’s arms.
Aizawa grimaces. “We’ll see what we can do. I’m going to get something from my pocket, it won’t be a weapon. So don’t attack me.”
“Okay,” Kakashi says, and he looks more relaxed now, but only a little bit.
Aizawa takes out his walkie talkie. “Aizawa. I need the ER ready for someone in...” he glances at the lifeless-looking child, “critical condition. The intruders aren’t...really hostile. They claim inter dimensional travel among...other things.”
The walkie talkie statics a little. Chiyo says, “Critical? Oh dear. We’ll do our best.”
And then Nedzu says, “Inter dimensional travel? Do you believe them, Aizawa?”
Aizawa thinks about that. They wear symbols Aizawa’s never seen, and they speak with an accent he’s never heard, and they talk about wars that don’t exist, and they don’t seem like they’re lying. Their uniform has some kind of standardization. That kind of thing just—couldn’t exist on Earth, he thinks.
“Yeah,” he says, and sighs. “Yeah.”
Nedzu makes some kind of high-pitched squeal. “Lovely! One of them is injured, you say? Well, get going! The infirmary waits!”
He really isn’t paid enough for this.
-
The operation takes a few hours but it goes—smoothly, all things considered. Chiyo’s healing quirk isn’t particularly useful in this case, but UA is set with the most recent medical technology, and so they...manage.
Rin insists on assisting with the procedure. They deny at first but she ends up being..surprisingly useful. The supposed interdimensionals have different physiology than normal people. Most notably, a vital system thread throughout the body that carries some sort of energy that’s apparently vital for the livelihood of the interdimensionals.
Rin also has a healing ability exponentially more potent and flexible than Chiyo’s recovery quirk. Despite, apparently, being a novice medic.
Aizawa, meanwhile, is relatively useless. So he just ends up settling in the infirmary, where the blonde has been laid into a bed and Kakashi is sitting in a plastic chair, properly treating to his various (less serious) injuries and sharpening his blades.
Rin stumbles in some hours later.
“Obito’s okay,” she says, directing her words at Kakashi. The boy nods sharply, and it’s well-masked, but Aizawa can see the relied, the sag of his shoulders, the looser posture. “Konoha’s medics will have to handle the rest once Sensei recovers enough to get us back. But he’s okay for now, the best he can be without good chakra healing.”
Most of that Aizawa doesn’t understand. What he does understand, though, is that Rin looks positively exhausted, and kind of faint. He quietly gives her his chair and gets her a lukewarm cup of water.
She takes the cup gingery and pauses just a moment, sniffs just a bit, before taking a sip. Aizawa doesn’t comment.
“Thank you,” she says, sounding dead on her feet, but also honestly thankful. “I—don’t know what we’d’ve done if you were less kind.”
“It’s common decency,” he says.
Rin shakes her head. “Not at all. You’re strangers. Even most civilians wouldn’t be so nice.”
“I’m a hero,” Aizawa says, “it’s my job.”
Both Kakashi and Rin give him weird looks.
“Hero..?” Rin asks.
Kakashi shifts a bit, eyes flicking over the room again. “You still haven't explained what kind of place this is. You’re all dreadfully inefficient, but surprisingly advanced.”
Aizawa feels his face twitch a bit.
“Japan, this country, is a large island nation. We use a hero system. Heroes are our domestic police force and we don’t have a military for foreign affairs.”
Rin chokes at that, coughing up a lungful of water. “W-what..?”
“You don’t have a military for foreign affairs?” Kakashi asks, and looks at him like he’s incredibly stupid. “How are you not dead yet?”
“Japan hasn’t gone to war in almost two hundred years,” Aizawa says.
Now Kakashi just looking at him like he’s lying. “Why not?”
“...We’re fighting the third great war in ninety years,” Rin says, and Aizawa feels a bit sick.
“Oh,” he says.
“You’re a member of the domestic military?” Kakashi asks, squinting a little. “Your skills are maybe Chūnin level. And your attitude is bad as an academy student.”
Aizawa feels a little insulted. “I’m a pro hero. This has been my job for almost a decade now. I’m a national expert in no-kill capture.”
Kakashi and Rin exchange looks.
“Really?” Rin asks, sounding almost tentative.
“You don’t seem like you have the personality for it,” Kakashi says.
Rin gives Kakashi a look. “Hey. Inoichi is really nice, even though he’s practically been born and bred for that.”
Aizawa is feeling for confused by the minute.
“That’s precisely the reason he can act like that,” Kakashi says, “he’s been trained to apply the right methods of disassociation and rationalization. This guy doesn't seem like he has.”
“Wait wait,” Aizawa interrupts, “what are you talking about?”
“T&I,” Kakashi answers, like it’s obvious, and takes a moment to connect the letters, but—
“I don’t do torture and interrogation,” Aizawa says. “We don’t do that. It’s illegal. Inhumane.”
Rin blinks at him. “...What? But you said no-kill capture. There’s only one reason for that, you know?”
Who the hell taught them that. Why do they think that. Aizawa—hasn’t really been thinking about it, but they’re kids. They must have some supervision, someone has been teaching them and—right. The blonde. Minato. Literally the only adult. They called him Sensei. Aizawa has some words to say to him.
“Never mind,” he says to the kids. “Do you know when your teacher with wake up?”
“I dunno,” Rin says, “He might already be awake. He probably is. Sensei’s amazing.”
Aizawa looks at the still-sleeping man doubtfully. His skin is still pale, and his heavy are heavy and deep, and his expression is smooth, and he doesn't look at all awake. He isn’t even holding his body in complete stillness like many pretending-to-sleep people do.
“...Sure,” Aizawa says.
Rin furrows her brows. “Do you not believe me? Sensei’s a Jōnin, and a genius, and going to be the next Hokage. Faking sleep is the least he can do. You should never assume a shinobi is asleep.”
A half beat, Aizawa’s still trying to decipher what she just said, and—
“Rin,” the blonde says, eyes perfectly open and sharp, body now sitting up in the bed, what the fuck, “my position hasn’t been publicly confirmed yet. Saying that is technically treason.”
The girl’s face falls. “Sorry.”
Minato’s expression lightens, he gestures her over. Pats her head. “Just be more careful. Other than that, your assessment was spot on! Assuming a shinobi as sleeping can be deadly.”
This just isn’t fair.
“How much were you awake for?” Aizawa asks, tone flat.
The blonde laughs just a bit and sheepishly rubs the back of his head. “Just the tail end, I’m not completely caught up to speed.”
Kakashi straightens. “After you passed out I gave negotiations to Rin and they agreed to help Obito. They’re non hostile. Obito’s—alive and stabilized.”
“That’s good,” Minato says, “you gave negotiations to Rin?” Kakashi nods. Minato’s whole face softens. “You did wonderful Kakashi. The ability to recognize who’s best for what is an essential skill while leading an operation. Your teamworking skills are really improving.”
Kakashi nods again, seeming almost...shy. Not quite, not really, but something similar.
A beat.
“Obito may even be able to continue service with a few months of recovery,” Rin adds, eyes bright, “it was amazing, Sensei. They kind of—reconstructed his side. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Did they,” Minato mutters, looking, for a moment, so incredibly calculating that it chills Aizawa down to his bones. That’s an expression a bit like Nedzu’s, but more cold and more human. And then—then the expression melts like it was never there, and Minato shifts his attention back to Aizawa. “You helped my student... Thank you so much. I really can’t express how grateful I am to you.”
“It’s okay,” Aizawa says, feeling a tad awkward. “It’s natural. Can I—speak to you alone?”
Because Minato has a kind face, and his words sound honest, but he’s the Sensei of these children. And one of them almost died and the other was bandaging his wounds and they’re all literal child soldiers. They’re just as young, if not younger, than his students and they’re fighting in a war.
Minato pauses just a moment, Aizawa sees that same calculation. “Sure,” Minato says, “Kakashi, Rin? Will you wait outside?”
They nod. A moment and they’re gone.
“So,” Minato says, and his demeanor has changed now that the children are out. His wariness shows through more fully. “You wanted to speak to me? And—apologies for my bad manners. My name is Namikaze Minato.”
“Aizawa Shouta,” Aizawa answers. “Your students are fighting the front lines of a war. They’re children.”
Minato’s face goes immediately grimmer. “Obito and Rin are already fourteen which—is old enough now, but point. They started too young. Especially Kakashi. I’m doing my best to keep them alive but—the war is dragging out too long, in general.”
Aizawa already has a headache. He’s going to get a migraine. Minato says fourteen is old enough like he believes it. “They’re child soldiers,” he tries again.
Minato nods grimly. “When I become Kage I’m going to do my best to end the war, keep baby ninja away from the front lines, and keep prodigies from being fast tracked up the system. Kakashi...he’s getting better, I think. But he’s so stunted from that treatment. I don’t think he’s ever had a normal conversation with his peers.”
That—sounds good, Aizawa thinks, but they’re speaking two different conversations here. There’s a disconnect between their minds.
“Where,” Aizawa asks, “do you live? What’s your country like?”
Minato blinks. “it’s a normal village—I suppose maybe things are different here. Our state is...hmm. A bit like a mini-country? Within the greater country. The rest of the country handles the economy...resources and food, and such. Konoha is the dominant military center.”
“So basically it’s a military—dictatorship? Republic?”
Minato tilts his head. “What’s a republic?”
How does it get worse.
“Are the people that run things elected by the people?”
Minato laughs a bit. “Of course not! Well-the council, maybe. But the Kage handles most of everything, and they’re chosen by the previous Kage. Or chosen by the most prominent shinobi...do you have those here? Hmm. Chosen by the most influential soldiers, then.”
“..Kage,” Aizawa says, “that’s—the leader?”
“Yeah,” Minato agrees, “head of state and military.”
Okay, so military dictatorship. Lovely.
“Do you even have child labor laws?” Minato looks a bit confused. So, a no, then. “I mean, there are some things a child shouldn’t do. That would—harm them, psychologically or physically.”
“Sure,” Minato says, “I agree with that.”
Well. That’s good, at least. But there’s still so much to say.
“Do you—” Aizawa pauses, breathe sin, breathes out. “I can bring you a book on modern ethics. And systems of government. Would you want to read it?”
“Sure,” Minato says, and there’s a gleam of curiosity, maybe even excitement, in his eyes. “I’d love to. New ideas are always interesting.”
Maybe there’s hope after all.