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the cannibalism is a non-issue, we have other problems, alright?

Summary:

Problems Minato did not expect to have that morning, or indeed, when he became a ninja in the first place #1: that is most definitely his youngest student, sitting in a pool of blood, sobbing whilst he rips chunks off flesh - from his father's still-warm corpse, what the fuck - and eats them.

_____

Minato is having a really, really bad day.
And apparently the cannibalism isn't even the main problem he's meant to be dealing with today.

Notes:

okay so I did attempt to proofread this, but I could /not/ figure out how to fix the tenses for the life of me. so. sorry for that in advance! I...think I caught other typos etc though, hopefully
this is another fic that has no dialogue in whatsoever lmao. well it has dialogue but instead of writing like "(long explanation of x goes here)" says Kakashi, I just put 'Kakashi explained x' type thing. therefore this fic is mostly a front row seat to Minato's Suffering upon discovering Hatakes practice cannibalism apparently
this is a one shot that will absolutely not be continued, sorry, hope yall enjoy

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Problems Minato did not expect to have that morning, or indeed, when he became a ninja in the first place #1: that is most definitely his youngest student, sitting in a pool of blood, sobbing whilst he rips chunks off flesh from his father's still-warm corpse what the fuck and eats them.

 

He's not sure what caused Sakumo's death, but that cannot be his first priority right now. First he needs to deal with the fact that clearly, some monster has forced Kakashi to do this and so clearly caused the child immense distress.

 

Minato gathers Kakashi into his arms - with some difficulty, because he screams and kicks and wriggles when he takes Kakashi from Sakumo's body, but he manages - and takes him to the Yamankas.

 

Hopefully Inoichi is free, he'd really prefer someone he knows to help deal with all of...this.

 

 

Problems Minato did not expect #2:Inoichi's immense discomfort when explaining that no, everything is fine. Except Sakumo's death. But other than that, everything is definitely completely fine.

 

Minato...doesn't even know where to start with his rebuttals. So he doesn't.

 

Apparently it is normal and legal and perfectly okay for Hatake to eat other Hatake upon death, and is in fact standard funerary practice for them, written in the original village charters as permissible.

 

Apparently, Kakashi's crying had nothing to do with the...cannibalism. No, that was a mixture of grief and alarmingly strong fear of abandonment. It appeared that Sakumo's suicide (panic about that later)was directly related to the village's hatred of him, and Kakashi was afraid that that meant nobody would want to be around him or look after him anymore. He'd been scared that his team and Kushina would react with the same hatred as the village, but trying to be hopeful - until he saw Minato walk in on him, and immediately panicked further because he knew a civilian-born shinobi was unlikely to react well to Hatake's manner of dealing with death. Minato rather hated himself for proving that particular fear correct, in his poor reaction at least.

 

Apparently no, Minato did not need to worry about Kakashi - still extremely upset about being taken away from his father's body, and even more upset about the invasion of privacy - biting Inoichi.

 

Minato knows that Kakashi is an extremely small child, and that extremely small children often resorting to biting people when very upset, thanks, no need for the condescension. But in his defense, Kakashi still has blood smeared all across his face and visible strings of flesh between his extremely sharp teethwhen he opens his mouth, so Minato thinks his panic when those fangs sink into Inoichi's arm viciously is completely justified.

 

Even if it did earn him an extremely disappointed look from Inoichi and increased hysterics from Kakashi who is absolutely convinced that this means he's right to think Minato is going to abandon him as a student and hate him forever and petition the Hokage to have him exiled from the village, or something. Minato doesn't know. Kakashi's a bit difficult to understand through the tears and not making much sense from what he can understand, but he tries to soothe his child as best he can - with help from a disapproving Inoichi.

 

 

Problems Minato did not expect #3: less than two hours after learning that his youngest student is a cannibal and apparently every shinobi but him already viewed this as expected and perfectly acceptable, he has to explain this to his other students. Because of course he does.

 

After all, he needs to explain why no team training will be happening today, and given Kakashi's sudden terror at being left alone for even a moment, it would probably be best if both he and his other students stayed with Kakashi - which Minato is absolutely not going to allow without first warning them what to expect.

 

Since somehow, it seems to be taken for granted that what should happen now that it's been confirmed Kakashi's mind is his own, is that Kakashi should go back to his clan compound and continue to eat his father's corpse. Obviously.

 

Minato feels a tiny bit like he's going insane. Does it make him a terrible person if he takes comfort from his students shocked, horrified, disbelieving response to his (carefully out of Kakashi's earshot) explanation of what's happening today?

 

He's not happy Obito and Rin are upset, and he's especially not happy that he will likely have to mediate to prevent them saying something insensitive to Kakashi, but at least their shock makes him feel a bit less mad for his own reaction earlier that day.

 

 

Problems Minato did not expect #4: just after he's finally managed to get Kakashi to calm down a little with the grief and exciting new abandonment issues, and Obito and Rin a little calmer about both Sakumo's death and the whole cannibalism issue, a new source of hysteria arises. From Kakashi again.

 

It appears that usually, Hatake funerals - Minato still feels very weird referring to this course of events as a funeral, in any sense - there would naturally be more relatives present and so less...person per person would be consumed. That made sense, in that he could understand how this would suddenly occur to Kakashi. What makes less sense to Minato is that the reason this is distressing to Kakashi is not because the child has suddenly realised he's the last of his clan. Actually it seems Kakashi hasn't connected "Sakumo and Kakashi are the last Hatake in Konoha; Sakumo is now dead" to "Kakashi is now the last and only Hatake in Konoha" - Minato prays Kakashi won't realise this for a while because he really can't deal with anymore breakdowns today, he's on the verge of having a good breakdown himself at this point.

 

No, Kakashi is upset because his being the only Hatake present means that he doesn't think he'll be able to eat the entirety of his father's corpse (and mark that down as sentences Minato never expected to think in all seriousness) and is terrified of his father being disappointed in him for that failure.

 

Which brings us neatly to

 

 

Problems Minato did not expect #5: having to convince his youngest student, with uncertain help from Rin and unsure but surprisingly helpful contributions from Obito, that no, he's sure Sakumo won't be disappointed Kakashi couldn't eat his whole body, yes, he's sure, no, Kakashi could never be a disappointment.

 

Minato wants a fucking drink.

 

It also results in

 

 

Problems Minato did not expect #6: sitting on the floor of the Hatake's living room, trying to ignore the tacky blood seeping into his trousers, and brainstorming ways with his team that Sakumo's body could still be entirely eaten, or otherwise dealt with.

 

Rin suggests burial. Kakashi asks if she wants to risk half of Konoha's farmland being rendered infertile by Sakumo's lightning poisoning the earth. Because sure, why not at this point. Minato is just rolling with every new absolutely wild thing he learns about the Hatake clan today now, because if he doesn't roll with the punches here it's going to knock him the fuck out.

 

Obito suggests cremation, which makes sense, as that's how the Uchiha handle their dead. Kakashi dryly explains that that would pose a similar issue - as in, Sakumo's clan-typical lightning would be problematic - but instead of poisoning the land, cremation risked a very large explosion that might take out a significant proportion of Konoha instead of just their farmland.

 

There's a stunned, disbelieving silence. Then everyone silently and unanimously agrees to drop that line of conversation immediately.

 

Apparently the Hatake's weird cannibalism-related kekkei genkai might not be the only reason they ate their dead, since it seems all the other options Minato's team could think of to deal with Sakumo's body had been tried in the past and recorded to have horribly destructive results. Kakashi does mention offhandedly at one point that some of his ancestors may have used that little factoid offensively in the past. Minato's just....not going to ask. He's going to have enough nightmares tonight already, thanks.

 

Which means, in the end, that their little square of people sitting on the bloody floor are forced to discuss ways that Sakumo can still be eaten, instead of literally any other way of handling his body. Maybe Minato's hope there had been a bit misplaced, he admits.

 

Kakashi, bristling with insulted defensiveness even as he's started sniffling again a bit pathetically, insists that he can finish eating and they should just let him and it will be fine. Rin responds with an impressively diplomatic answer that nevertheless boils down to 'inevitably throwing up because you forced yourself to overeat from your father's corpse is literally the most disgusting thing I've ever heard'. Kakashi concedes the point begrudgingly, and demands alternate solutions. Minato notices Obito's relieved expression matches his own, glad both that that won't be being pursued, and that Rin managed to shut Kakashi down without upsetting him even further.

 

Minato suggests using some form of stasis seal to preserve Sakumo's body, and then Kakashi could just....continue eating when he was able to without making himself ill. This nearly makes Kakashi start crying again, looking incredibly hurt.

 

Apparently eating the dead is acceptable but 'treating them like some...some object to just be discarded and ignored like that!' is not. Good to know. Wish that was knowledge he didn't now have, but frankly the same could be said of the entire day so far. Oh well.

 

Every attempt at talking after that down is shut down brutally by a Kakashi who is once again very upset and looking extremely angry about it. Minato isn't quite sure whether that's because he's tired of being upset, or embarrassed to be so visibly distressed in front of his team, or both.

 

Eventually Kakashi calms down and stops shutting down anyone's attempts to talk, so the incredibly morbid conversation can continue.

 

Obito, looking disgusted but trying to hide it (badly, Minato notes with a sigh), tentatively suggests that several of his relatives have a contract with the crows, which are carrion eaters. If Sakumo's corpse has to be eaten instead of burned or buried, would approaching the crows for help be a suitable solution?

 

Kakashi looks just as disgusted as Obito, though probably for different reasons. His responding rant can be summarised, generally, as 'no that would absolutely not be acceptable'.

 

Rin though latches on to the idea of summons as a potential solution. Once Kakashi seems to have finished insulting Obito's intelligence, common sense and past few generations of ancesters, Rin asks whether asking the help of the Hatake summons would be acceptable. Apparently it would be, and Kakashi's continued on and off crying stops abruptly. Which is admittedly a bit creepy.

 

Kakashi insists that whilst his own summons could help, it would be much better for Sakumo's own wolf summons to...participate, but that leads back to the obvious problem of their summoner being very, very dead.

 

Minato tentatively asks whether Kakashi and Sakumo used the same summoning contract. Kakashi gives him an incredibly suspicious look for verging a little too close to clan matters, but admits they did use the same contract for whatever animals in the canine family suited them best. Minato points out that in that case, Kakashi's summons should be able to contact Sakumo's summons and ask them to help.

 

Although admittedly it would be a bit of a tedious process, since Kakashi would have to summon one of his pack, then that dog would have to dispel itself, then find one or more of Sakumo's summons and hopefully get them to agree, and then bring them along when they reverse-summoned themselves back to Kakashi (which was in itself rather difficult to achieve. Summoning? Pretty easy. A summoner reverse-summoning themself to their summons? Harder, but still pretty straightforward. Summons reverse-summoning themselves to their humans? Tricky, on part of both summons and summoner, and that's without tagalongs).

 

They do it anyway.

 

 

Problems Minato did not expect #7: please please please let that civilian not report them for some imagined crime or complain to the Hokage or something. Please, Minato is begging, the universe has been so cruel already today, surely he deserves this one thing?

 

No luck.

 

The Sandaime is surprisingly understanding of their explanation as to why the civilian saw the horror show that they did. That is, why two teenagers and several large wolves were seen traipsing after a single adult, who was carrying a visibly gory and partially-eaten corpse over his shoulder, and a smaller child whose very bloody face and especially mouth painted a rather alarming picture.

 

(They'd had to go outside because they couldn't all comfortably sit in the living room with Sakumo's summons too, and none of them wanted to leave Kakashi alone. But maybe they should have been more careful to ensure that particular part of the clan compound was still out of view from the street... To be fair, it probably also did not help that the entire group's first response to the civilians shocked scream was to just freeze and turn to stare at her until she ran away. Or that everyone except the wolves had drying blood all over most of their clothes, since they had been sitting on a floor which had had what honestly seemed like an unreasonable amount of blood on its surface.)

 

That didn't make the conversation any less uncomfortable. Especially since Kakashi still hadn't had a chance to clean his face, and none of them had been able to change clothes. Although at least the Sandaime hadn't summoned them until after Sakumo's body was finally dealt with and his summons dispelled (and thank fuck that was over) so Minato no longer had a corpse in tow.

 

Kakashi seemed to be taking a peculiar pointed pride in refusing to put his mask back up though, which...Minato wished he wouldn't. Very sharp teeth he had not previously seen, the aforementioned blood, and Kakashi hadn't had any more of a chance to brush those fangs than he had to clean his face, which made for a rather horrifying image. As eager as Obito and - to a lesser extent - Rin had been in the past about the idea of finally seeing Kakashi's face, now they couldn't seem to look. Which Minato thought was completely understandable.

 

The Sandaime was also making rather fixed eye contact with Minato, instead of looking anywhere near Kakashi.

 

Maybe that avoidance was the point Kakashi was making? Somehow?

 

Minato didn't know. He just wanted this day to be over.

 

 

Problems Minato did not expect #8: Kushina was literally never going to believe how awful his day had been. You just had to be there.

 

He was not getting sufficient sympathy from any quarter, which Minato felt was truly a tragedy.

 

But at least he could sleep now. And maybe have a drink.

 

He let himself fall forward onto the couch, and buried his face in the cushions with a truly pathetic sound of relief and belated misery.

 

Kushina patted his shoulder.

Notes:

I have no regrets
unlike Minato, probably