Chapter Text
Iruka raced through the treetops, seeking his way through the thicket. The leaves blocked out most of the sunlight, and dark shadows obscured the forest ground far below.
He was on a mission to deliver the scroll in his pocket back to Konoha. A relatively boring mission, but pretty much what he was used to. Chuunin usually weren’t assigned any high-stakes missions, those were reserved for the jounin and tokubetsu jounin, especially in these peaceful times.
While he jumped from branch to branch Iruka contemplated his surroundings. The trees he was traversing were far more dense and unruly than those surrounding Konohagakure. Their growth was not shaped by the traffic of shinobi heading in and out of the village, no small branches broken off if they grew in the way, the rind not smoothed by frequent footfall. It seemed he still had a ways to go then.
Iruka hadn’t gotten many opportunities to head this far out of the village since he’d become a teacher at the academy. Even his supposed free time during the school breaks were filled with administrative work and shifts at the mission desk. The missions he was issued were most often emergencies around the village and more of a general call to action to all shinobi in the village, not necessarily missions assigned to him.
Iruka slowed his steps and furrowed his brows with confusion.
He wasn’t usually sent on retrieval missions like this, even if they were standard chuunin-level missions. Additionally, he certainly would not have been sent on any mission outside the village walls alone.
Iruka closed his eyes and concentrated on the environment as he hopped from tree to tree and felt for his surroundings more intently. The air was quiet, nothing but the rustle of leaves and the sound of the air as it rushed past him. No usual background chatter of birds or busy buzzing of insects. The forest was silent, or more accurately it was devoid of life. And he was alone, unable to feel any other chakra presences around him. Where was the rest of his team?
Iruka squinted at the shadows around him. It looked like the sun stood directly overhead, it gave no hint as to which direction he was approaching Konoha. But he didn’t feel lost, a faint pull directed him further along the path he’d taken, assured him to continue.
He stopped short at the edge of a clearing and hid himself in the densest part of foliage he could find.
This was not normal.
Even after some widely destructive battles he’d born witness to in the past, he’d still been able to hear the scurrying of animals in the ground, hurrying about their way going deep and deeper underground.
Could it that he was trapped in a genjutsu? He’d doubt any ninja able to conjure an illusion on this level of detail would have been so careless as to craft a lifeless forest.
Not one to leave any stone unturned, Iruka widened his stance and gathered his chakra around him.
“Kai!”
A peek through his eyelashes revealed the unchanged forest around him.
So, it probably wasn’t a genjutsu. Or it was a genjutsu way above his skill level and he’d have to wait for the caster to dispel it. Or wait for someone to rescue him from the outside.
“Great,” Iruka muttered to the empty air. He loved being unable to escape someone else’s whims.
He plopped himself down on the branch with an annoyed huff and crossed his arms in front of himself. What even would be the purpose of trapping him here, in a forest? Any valuable information he’d have would be in Hokage tower, concerning the missions he signed off. Here, he only had the scroll.
The scroll he had to deliver.
Iruka snapped open his pocket and slid out the scroll to inspect it. It looked like a scroll made in Konoha, its seal somehow special, more complex than the one used for communication missions. He let one of the sunspots fall on it and drew together his brows. It looked to be a much more complex seal - he’d guess it to be on an S-class level mission kind of complicated.
He definitely should not have this in his possession.
Iruka moved the scroll around and admired the level of detail put into the miniaturization of the signs of the seal, while he mentally picked apart its composition.
The seal’s designer had learned their craft in Konoha, the energetic strokes familiar in their shape.
A sudden urge to try and break the seal overcame Iruka, to test his own skill and see if he could, though a quiet voice in the back of his mind begged him not to do it.
The sudden rise of the hairs on the back of his neck cut Iruka’s musings short. Someone was watching him.
Iruka stilled his breathing and tried to pinpoint the presence. Everything around seemed just as lifeless as before. But he’d learnt to trust his instincts- he taught their importance to all of the pre-genin in his classes. He broke into a sprint away from the clearing, while he shoved the scroll back into its pocket.
However he had gotten that scroll, it could not fall into enemy hands.
Iruka raced from treetop to treetop, concentrated on choosing the fastest path forward and occasionally checked if the presence was following him. He thought he could finally feel a faint disturbance in the natural chakra behind him, though between avoiding branches hitting his face and running, he couldn’t be fully sure.
Sweat soaked through his hitai-ate by the time Iruka could make out the quiet footfall of the person following him. They were closing in the distance between them, faster in their sprint and with better stamina than he.
He’d have no choice but to confront them.
Iruka kept an eye out for a suitable spot as he devised a plan. He had no idea which skills his pursuer had other than formidable chakra control – they stayed this well hidden while hunting someone or something, which was no small feat.
If he could keep them from forming ninjutsu and instead engage in taijutsu, he’d probably have a better chance. For that to work he needed trees with parallel branches, not too far apart to engage, but not so close that he couldn’t get a quick look at the person first.
Iruka panted through the pain in his side, he felt a flush of relief run through his system as he saw a perfect spot. When he used his momentum around the trunk to face his pursuer he barely found his footing on the branch before cold, smooth steel slid through his throat, and left an explosion of pain in its wake.
Hot liquid cascaded down the front of his chest as his hands reflexively shot up, trying to stop the bleeding, as he felt his life seep through his fingers. He gurgled as the blood began filling his mouth and lungs and stumbled backwards. Battling the urge to cough out the seemingly endless stream of blood, his body still screamed for oxygen after the run. Iruka felt light-headed in his panic and lost balance, tipped backwards and off the branch.
Vaguely aware of someone shouting his name, Iruka hit the ground.
With a strangled gasp Iruka shot upwards in his bed, heart beating quickly in his chest. His bed was barely illuminated by the diffuse light of the lamp post on the street below, shadows lurking in the unlit corners of his room.
He fumbled with the bedsheets he had tangled himself in and hurriedly reached for the switch of his reading lamp to flick it on.
Iruka swept his eyes through the room and breathed a sigh of relief. Everything looked as it did normally, no looming shadows stalking him, the background noise of life humming through the walls. He was alone.
Iruka gulped down deep, calming breaths as he thought back on his dream. It’d been some time since he had last had a nightmare, though they weren’t usually as detailed. He’d seen the leaves on the trees, smelled the damp forest air. He’d felt the cold steel of the kunai slicing his neck. The warmth of his own blood running down his front.
There’d be no point in going back to sleep, he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. That dream had disturbed him thoroughly.
Iruka swung his feet over the edge of the bed and rolled his shoulders. He could prepare some materials for the lessons that day, or maybe he would just read a book to take his mind off things… It wasn’t like calculating kunai trajectories had new and exciting developments that’d capture him. Most of his students learnt better by throwing the kunai themselves anyway, even if that meant he’d have to have more band-aids on hand.
He absentmindedly smoothed a hand up the front of his shirt, rubbed a thumb over the spot his throat had been cut. It had all felt too real for a dream, the exertion of running, the pain of the cut, even the suffocating feeling of drowning in his own blood.
Reading it was.
Iruka begged the coffee maker to miraculously produce a stronger brew of black coffee than the one slowly trickling into his cup, while he prepared for a late shift in the missions room. Managing a horde of children somehow hellbent on hitting anything but the target he had affixed to the tree in the school courtyard had left Iruka even more drained than the hours of sleep he had missed out on. Though those probably didn’t help his case, too.
Luckily, he didn’t have sorting duty today. His head would probably hit the desk not even twenty minutes into stacking scrolls, if that were the case. At least if he was talking to people and having to look at what some shinobi thought was a passable missions report, he had a chance to finish his shift without having to rewrite scrolls because he had drooled on them. Not that he was speaking from experience and that had happened before.
No, Iruka was the epitome of workplace ethics.
He contemplated draining the finished cup on the spot and brewing a second one immediately afterwards as he stared into the depths of the dark liquid. He really should get moving. Evenings and nights in the missions room weren’t as populated, so Anko could probably stem the workload for a while alone, but well, workplace ethics. Also, it wouldn’t really be fair if he got to spend quality time with the coffee machine while Anko had to suffer.
Iruka willed one foot in front of the other Iruka and dragged himself to his spot behind the desk.
“Don’t you look peachy today,” Anko whistled from his left. “Rough day?”
A groan escaped Iruka, “Rough is right. I barely slept and then I had to run from and after kunai all day,” he waved his arm in Anko’s general direction and showed off the assortment of scratches he had not bothered to heal with chakra.
“Looks to me like they got the Will of Fire alright.” she commented and broke out into a boisterous fit of laughter.
“Will yeah, Way not so much,” with a sigh Iruka waved one of the waiting ninja forward.
Around ten o’clock the missions room had pretty much emptied, which left Iruka and Anko to chat. It was mainly Anko chatting away about her day, she relayed some funny happenings from her class and some dispute in the teacher’s room he had luckily missed. Iruka absentmindedly responded with the expected hums and oohs throughout, glad he didn’t have to do much talking today. The dream still occupied most of his thoughts, its unsettling feeling snuck itself into the quiet moments he had been able to find.
Unable to ignore it any longer, he turned to face Anko and put down the scrolls he had been rolling up.
“Do you know if anyone is on an S-rank scroll retrieval mission at the moment?”
Anko gave him a strange look. “That’s what’s been on your mind the whole time?” she tapped on her desk as she thought about it for a moment. “Well, we don’t give out the S-ranks, so no idea really, but a few jounin are currently out on missions, so maybe?”
“Mhm, maybe.” Judging by Anko’s reaction he wasn’t making the happiest face at her answer.
“I mean, we can guess who’s out.” She put up a finger for each person, counting them off, “I haven’t seen Asuma-san in a while, and I think Kurenai-san is out, too. Ah-, but with those two…,” she trailed off for a moment. “Gai-san was on the training grounds this morning. I’m sure Genma-san was around, too. Haven’t seen Kakashi-san, uhmm...”
“Thanks, but it’s not that important,” Anko stared at him, fingers still raised. “It’s just- I had a nightmare about it, so it was my mind.”
“You had a nightmare about an S-rank mission?” she wrinkled her brow while she leaned back in her chair.
“Weird, right.”
“Yeah.”
Iruka shrugged his shoulders and turned back to his desk, picking up the last scroll again.
“Are you coming to Otose’s tomorrow? Taking your mind off things?”
“Tomorrow?” He didn’t have a missions desk shift as far as he remembered and maybe having a few drinks with friends would really help lift his spirits. “You know, what - Yes, I’ll come.”
Out of the corner of his eye he watched Anko pump her fist, “Kotetsu and Izumo are down, too. It’ll be great.”