Wandering Eye; Unwelcome Sight

by vulcanhighblood

Summary:

Umino Iruka is off on a new C-Rank mission. He really hopes he can avoid getting injured this time, or at least stay out of his genin team members' way long enough to be helpful. Finding himself trusted with even more confidential information, Iruka's beginning to wish he wasn't. It seems that seeing too much can be as much a curse as taking on a mission sight-unseen.

...are all of Konoha's kekkei genkai monstrous, or is Iruka just unlucky enough to encounter the worst of them one after another?

Chapter 1: In the Way

“I still can’t believe you got in my way like that.”

Iruka sighed, long and loud. “I can’t believe you’re still giving me grief about it!” He turned to fix an annoyed glare on Itachi, who was treating him to much the same.

“I was there with plenty of advance notice-”

“I didn’t have time to look that hard, I told you, I just fell in front of-”

“Will you two knock it off already?” Shinko interrupted the two of them with a growl that would put an Inuzuka to shame. “Itachi, you were moving cautiously because of the dangerous terrain. Iruka knew where the buried tags were, so he jumped to a spot where he knew it would be safe. He didn’t mean to jump into your attack.”

“Yeah! If anything, shouldn’t I be the mad one?” Iruka pointed out. “You stabbed me with a kunai!”

I’ll do it again, Itachi’s face said. “You shouldn’t be in an ally’s blood circle,” is what his mouth said.

“I’ll remember that next time,” Iruka said snidely, patting his bicep pointedly. “Thanks for the new scar, by the way.”

I can give you another one, Itachi’s glare said. He didn’t answer verbally. 

“You’re lucky it wasn’t poisoned,” Shinko told Iruka primly. “He does use those sometimes.”

“Usually it’s the senbon he poisons,” Iruka protested. “Right?”

“Iruka,” Itachi said, full of exasperation, “the point is that you don’t jump in front of a shinobi without any warning!” 

“I didn’t mean to!” Iruka threw his hands in the air. “For the last time, I was flung into the air by that guy from Kumogakure!” He still wasn’t sure exactly what jutsu the man had used, either. It had been enough to send Iruka flying, and he’d used all of his considerably meager abilities to aim for a place where the other ninja hadn’t booby-trapped the ground, closing his eyes and listening for the spot in the earth that wasn’t humming with primed chakra wires. The fact that he’d managed to turn in mid-air and aim for an open spot had been a feat he hadn’t had a chance to practice before, and it was a step above his usual capability. He’d been proud of the manouver, right up until he opened his eyes to adjust his landing and realized that he wasn’t the only one who’d chosen to occupy that space.

He hadn’t heard Itachi because the sound of chakra a regular shinobi gave off wasn’t loud enough for Iruka to make out, unless they were actively channeling it into a powerful technique. He’d heard Shisui’s sharingan, of course, but he’d never really mastered the ability to hear his comrades’ chakra flow in the middle of a battle. It was too hectic, too much noise, for him to really distinguish.

And then, he’d realized he was going to land basically on top of Itachi. He’d managed to flip over again and land in front, and not on top of his teammate, but he’d taken a blade to the arm for his trouble. Iruka had yelled, Itachi had yelled, then they’d both needed to take off in opposite directions in order to avoid a follow-up attack from the Kumogakure shinobi.  

The argument had been tabled until the enemy had been trussed up and secured. Yuuki-sensei had gone ahead with the captured shinobi, because there was apparently a rendezvous point with T&I somewhere not too far from where they were, right at the border. He was likely to return at any moment. Itachi, Shinko, and Iruka were sitting in their makeshift camp, waiting for him, at which point Itachi had set down his canteen, tugged at his fancy-pants Uchiha-branded jacket collar, and muttered something about Iruka needing to stay in his lane, or whatever, and it had immediately devolved into a shouting match. 

Shinko had mostly stayed out of it, but even she was getting tired of the fight by now. Iruka didn’t blame her - he was tired of fighting, too, but he also hated being told that he was wrong. He knew he was wrong, that he should have paid more attention to where he was going, that he’d almost caused a major incident by crashing into Itachi and sending them both sprawling. He was lucky he’d only gotten his arm nicked and not something worse. And yet… he hated feeling inadequate. He hated that Itachi thought it was his place to judge Iruka, to tell him that he needed to shape up his act. 

He’d thought that Itachi liked him, at least a little bit, as a comrade if nothing else. But it hurt to be criticised so harshly and it made him defensive. Even if he probably deserved the criticism. He still didn’t want to hear it, not from Itachi, anyway.

“Just because you don’t intend for a negative consequence,” Itachi said, in a low voice, “doesn’t mean-”

“Oh yeah, well, watch this negative consequence,” Iruka exploded, jumping to his feet and making an obscene gesture at Itachi before marching away from the camp.

“Iruka, where are you going?” Shinko called after him.

He glanced over his shoulder, seeing that she remained seated, while Itachi was on his feet, still glaring. 

“We’re supposed to stay here, Iruka,” Itachi reminded him, his voice flat and too bitter to be the voice of the baby ninja he was. He sounded old, tired, and disappointed. Like old man Sarutobi when Iruka went to the Hokage’s office for tea and let his guard down enough to talk about whatever trouble he was in this time. 

“You stay here,” Iruka said through clenched teeth. “I’m going to take a walk.” He wasn’t, not really. He just needed to clear his head, and be out of line of sight of his genin teammates. He was going to scream, or break something, or maybe just lay down and die. And he didn’t want to have any breakdown around his teammates. He was the oldest one, and the most useless one, and it was so damn frustrating to know that he was never going to be the perfect shinobi that Itachi already was. And he didn’t need to be reminded of that by mister perfect ninja every time he breathed wrong.  

Scowling, Iruka threw himself down in the tangle of roots at the base of a large tree and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come, only hot anger that pounded in his head like a headache. He was being stupid. He knew he was being stupid. But he couldn’t make himself not be stupid, no matter how hard he tried or how much he learned! He was always 

so

fucking

stupid.

Leaning his head back against the rough bark of the tree, Iruka dropped his hands from his face to his lap, and gazed up at the leaves dancing in a light breeze. The soft green of the canopy overhead was soothing, and as he gave himself a moment to just breathe, he felt the calm of the forest gradually penetrate him, seeping past the resentment and anger, settling into the feeling of hurt that lingered under it all. 

Itachi hadn’t even apologized for stabbing him.

And maybe it was dumb for Iruka to care so much about something so insignificant, but… was he even sorry? Or did he think Iruka deserved to be stabbed? It wasn’t like he could demand an apology. But he’d definitely apologized for jumping in front of him. Well. Okay. He’d apologized badly, and it had probably included an insult and an annoyed tone of voice. So maybe he was guilty of the same thing that was making him feel so terrible. He should probably apologize.

But oh, how very much he did not want to do that.

Shutting his eyes for a moment, Iruka breathed in the fresh air of the forest, sighed, and then pulled himself to his feet, ignoring the twinge in his right arm where the fresh wound lingered. He should head back to the camp before Yuuki-sensei discovered his absence and laid into him, too.

---

Training the next week was rough. Iruka wasn’t talking to Itachi, and Itachi wasn’t talking to Iruka, and Shinko seemed divided on who to side with, though she eventually sided with Itachi. Iruka wasn’t surprised by this. It was pretty normal for people to not take his side, after all. 

Yuuki-sensei was treating them all to vaguely confused glances, but he hadn’t pulled them aside yet, and Iruka wasn’t sure if that was because he wanted them to work it out amongst themselves or because he, too, thought Iruka was the one in the wrong and was just looking for an excuse to kick him off of the team. 

By the time the day ended, all three of them were exhausted. Normally, Itachi would have invited himself along to wherever Iruka was going to grab dinner, and Shinko would have tagged along. Instead, Itachi left without a word to Iruka, Shinko glanced awkwardly between them before taking her own leave, and Iruka shrugged off their snubs, and turned to make his own way home by way of the supermarket’s half-price bentos when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. 

“Iruka,” Yuuki-sensei said, voice heavy, “We need to talk.”

Iruka felt his spine stiffen in defense, despite trying to seem indifferent to the oncoming lecture he was sure to recieve for being a bad teammate . “Yeah? What about?”

“It’s regarding our upcoming mission,” Yuuki-sensei explained. “It’ll be C-rank.”

They’d taken only three C-ranked missions so far, and Iruka had come back injured from all three of them - the only one in his Genin team who had taken pretty serious hits in all three, in fact. Itachi’s stab to his arm had been the least problematic injury of the lot, given that their first mission had ended with a kunai planted in Iruka’s stomach. Their second mission had ended with Iruka being almost-impaled on some icicles, though he’d managed to twist enough that they just ripped through his calves and thighs, missing the important arteries, so he hadn’t bled out, at least. That had been during their run to the land of snow, and while the icicles had been bad enough, he’d also been upset that they’d torn right through the winter gear he’d been given by Itachi. Still, a quick patching of the tears had at least repaired the gear enough to ward off frostbite. Then, in their most recent mission, Iruka had not only been stabbed by Itachi (which was embarassing enough), his ankle had also gotten half-crushed by an earth jutsu, which had weakened the joint far more than he’d realized.

The day before, in training, he’d gone and tweaked his weakened ankle pretty bad, leaving him crumpled on the ground and trying to breathe for a few seconds too long to protect himself from attack. Shinko had claimed victory in their sparring match, though she hadn’t seemed particularly happy about it. 

While they’d fumbled around trying to figure out what to do about Iruka’s ankle, Itachi had been practically holding his own in his spar against Yuuki-sensei, and hadn’t seemed to notice Iruka’s stumble, or the way he’d limped off the training field at the end of the day. But again, Iruka wasn’t sure if that was part of the intentional snubbing, or if Itachi just didn’t find him worth worrying about anymore.

The point of it all was, Iruka was the failure of the group. The same way he always was. It shouldn’t be a surprise by now, but somehow Iruka still wasn’t used to feeling like a failure, even though all he ever seemed to do was fail. And if Yuuki-sensei wanted to talk to him about an upcoming C-rank mission, it was probably because he wanted to make sure Iruka wasn’t going to fuck it up this time.

“It’s a bit of an unusual mission,” Yuuki-sensei said by way of introduction, “and I think it’s particularly suited to your skills.”

Iruka blinked up at him for an awkward moment, before asking, “What skills?”

Yuuki-sensei frowned a bit, seeming confused by Iruka’s question. “You are the team’s subterfuge specialist, are you not? Or were those meetings you had in T&I just for show?”

Iruka blinked. “You know about the T&I visits?” he asked, and felt his face heat immediately as he realized how stupid he sounded. Of course his Jonin-sensei knew something, even if the Hokage hadn’t immediately alerted Yuuki-sensei, there’s no way that the ANBU who hated (okay, only sometimes hated) him - Hound - hadn’t dropped by to give Yuuki-sensei the heads-up. It seemed like something he would do. 

“The Jonin commander handpicked this mission with our team in mind,” Yuuki-sensei explained with a bit of a grin, his grip on Iruka’s shoulder tightening ever-so-slightly. “On recommendation from Yamanaka Inoichi-san.” 

Iruka felt a little bit dizzy. “He did?” 

“We’ll be running an advance team,” Yuuki-sensei explained, “but there will be a hidden backup team tailing us. I suppose that they were looking for a Genin team that would be able to simultaneously draw attention and act innocent.”

That… made sense. Except there was one problem with that. “Itachi is really bad at pranks, Yuuki-sensei,” Iruka said, frowning slightly. “Is he going to be able to lie well?”

Yuuki-sensei chuckled, lifting his hand from Iruka’s shoulder to gesture vaguely in the air. “Why do you think I approached you separately? It was recommended that I only give you this information,” he pointed at Iruka before adding, with a smirk, “...given your A-rank security clearance.”

Iruka frowned. “I thought that was temporary.”

Yuuki-sensei lifted a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture. “It is,” he said with a wink, “definitely temporary.”

Iruka felt as if sunlight had broken through a bank of clouds overhead. “Ohhh,” he said. “And exactly how long does this, er, temporary clearance last?”

Yuuki-sensei shrugged one shoulder. “Best to ask Inoichi-san and Shikaku-san,” he said. “I’m not in charge of that sort of thing.”

Am I going to have ‘ temporary’ clearance until I make Jonin? Iruka wondered. I guess that would still qualify as temporary by some definition. Then again, knowing his luck, he’d do something stupid and they would revoke his security clearance two days after he returned from the next mission. At least he’d still get to visit Ibiki, probably.

“Okay,” Iruka said, rocking back on his heels, wincing a bit at the pressure it put on his bandaged ankle. “Anything else I should know?”

“Can I count on you to keep this information to yourself?” Yuuki-sensei asked, tilting his head and stroking his scraggly goatee thoughtfully. 

“Of course,” Iruka said. 

“Excellent,” Yuuki-said, reaching into his vest and withdrawing a mission scroll. “Read this,” he said, handing it to Iruka.

He took it, and frowned at the seal on it. “This isn’t the usual scroll,” he said, turning the tight roll of paper in his hands and eying it closely. 

“That’s because it’s the scroll for the jonin-sensei,” Yuuki-sensei explained, “not the genin-team scroll.”

Iruka blinked. “There are two scrolls?”

“Jonin-sensei sometimes need more information than is safe for the genin team to know,” Yuuki-sensei explained. “Go ahead and read it, you’ll understand.”

Iruka nodded, and unrolled the scroll, eying the information. He immediately spotted three key differences. “They give you learning objectives for each mission?”

“Of course,” Yuuki-sensei said with a chuckle. “We’re sensei, aren’t we? We’re supposed to be teaching our teams.”

Iruka frowned, nodding. “There’s a whole bunch more information in the possible threats section.”

“You don’t want to overwhelm genin with unlikely scenarios, but it behooves a sensei to be prepared for all possibilities,” Yuuki-sensei explained.

“There isn’t a recommended supplies section, either,” Iruka said.

“It’s rather assumed a jonin will know their skillset and needs better than a mission desk clerk,” Yuuki-sensei said, sounding amused.

“I guess that makes sense,” Iruka agreed, frowning as he began to read the scroll in earnest. 

Jonin-Sensei: Minazuki Yuuki

Mission Objective: Escort the Fire Daimyo to Point A [see route map]

Learning Objective: Escort Missions, Defensive Skills, Observation, Chakra-sensing

Possible Threats:
- Missing-Nin [route map areas A, B, D, and F]
- Assassination Attempt [see A-Rank Records DANA01 - DANA08]
- Ongoing Threats in Combat regions [route map areas A, B, F, G]
- Toxic Terrain [route map area E]
- Bandits/Rogue Elements [route map areas A, E, F]

Rapid Response Team Availabity: 2 ANBU teams, approx 15 minute distance

Once he was finished reading, he rolled it up, and glanced at Yuuki-sensei. “You want this back now?”

“Are you able to recall the information?”

Iruka nodded. “I got it.” If there was one thing he’d gotten pretty good at, it was remembering things quickly. After he’d been banned from borrowing textbooks (who knew a few comedically-placed moustaches could be so upsetting to teachers?), he’d been forced to memorize information quickly, since he’d never been left with a textbook unsupervised while at school. At least old man Sarutobi had let him do as he pleased. Though in fairness, he’d only been able to check a few books out of the family library, so most of what he learned there had to be remembered in painstaking detail, too. 

All that to say, Iruka had certainly honed his recall abilities. He wouldn’t have trouble remembering the scroll, or the attached route map, though he worried that knowing there were poisonous plants wouldn’t be enough to keep him from accidentally stumbling into them.

“Excellent,” Yuuki-sensei said, taking the scroll back from Iruka. “See you at the training grounds tomorrow. Remember,” he lifted his finger back to his lips, the light in his eyes dancing with amusement. “It’s our secret.”

Iruka nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. Was he really about to meet the Daimyo of the Land of Fire? It seemed like far too much to expect a team accompanying the Daimyo to be a mere C-rank mission! Shinko and Itachi would suspect something, for sure. Still. Maybe, if Iruka was smart about it, he’d be able to misdirect their attention. “Thanks for telling me,” he said, not sure how else to express the gratitude he felt. He’d been so sure he was going to be scolded for consistently getting injured, and instead, Yuuki-sensei had given him the chance to see something most people didn’t get eyes on until they themselves became jonin-sensei.

Yuuki-sensei waved off his gratitude with a dismissive gesture. “Have a good night, Iruka. Get some sleep.”

“I will,” Iruka lied, changing directions as soon as Yuuki-sensei vanished in a burst of leaves. If he was going to be escorting the Daimyo, he needed to pull out all the stops, and that meant picking up some extra chakra paper. He had some experimental tags to work the kinks out of before morning, and that meant his current supply would not suffice. Hopefully he could get a decent price if he purchased the paper in bulk. If not, well… he was the team’s subterfuge expert, according to Yuuki-sensei. Maybe he could take out an advance, and pay back the supply depot later.

Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that, but Iruka was nothing if not prepared.

Notes:

Well, after a long detour of 4 fics I didn't plan on, we are finally on track with the fics I actually PLANNED to write. This one in particular I have been anticipating for a long while, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I'm going to enjoy writing it!

Those of you who know Itachi's backstory, be afraid, be very afraid...

Those who don't, well, you should be afraid too. >:)

Chapter 2: Security Clearance

Summary:

Iruka gets his hands on some crucial information.

Several hours, a few sheafs of ‘borrowed’ chakra paper, and five failed tag experiments later, Iruka decided he needed a break. And he knew just the thing, too. He wanted to know more about one of the pieces of information included in the mission scroll, but hadn’t been contained with the rest of the details. There had been a map of the route, but there hadn’t been any sign of the ‘Assassination Attempts’ records in Yuuki-sensei’s scroll. Just what looked to be serial numbers, and a notation that it was an A-Rank record.

Well. If he did still have A-Rank security clearance, he could probably at least take a look at those. He thought about going to T&I, but he didn’t know Ibiki’s schedule, and he had a feeling that it would take too long to convince someone to let him see Inoichi. So, he figured the next best option was to head for the Mission Desk and get into the records room himself.

At first, he considered striding in and just asking to see the records. But - and this was a major problem - the Mission Desk was full of people who thought of him as a genin. And in fairness, he was a genin. They’d never let him in to see the A-Rank records. 

And if he went around advertising his A-Rank security clearance, he might end up attracting the Hyuuga clan’s attention again. He’d been trying to keep a low profile since the annoying ANBU (Hound) had warned him about that, and marching boldly into the Mission Desk demanding to be taken back to the A-Rank Records Room seemed like a terrible idea. 

Besides, it had been awhile since he used his skeleton key seal, and he’d been hoping to practice it in combination with a new seal he’d been working on that functioned similarly to a camouflage technique, but with the stability of a seal. Between the two of them, he should be able to slip in and get to the records room. And then, if he was discovered, it wouldn’t be a problem because the people most likely to find him were the people who would know that he had A-Rank security clearance. 

…probably.

If nothing else, they’d probably take him to T&I again, and Ibiki could set them straight. He might be mad if he got woken up because of it, though. Which was worth considering.

Sighing, Iruka laid the skeleton key over his stomach, feeling the way it pulled at the sea of chakra in his abdomen. Then, he placed the second seal, the invisibility cloak, in the center of his chest, resting right on his sternum. It seemed to work best when pulling from a slightly higher chakra center, versus the pool where the skeleton key siphoned away energy to keep it running. 

Iruka felt the drain like a low-level headache, pulling at him and sapping his energy with every second. He didn’t have the chakra reserves to use both of them for very long, but he only needed to be in the records room long enough to find DANA01 - DANA08 . So it would be fine.

Probably.

He’d never actually used both of them at the same time before. But it sounded like they’d work well together in theory. And this was a good chance to take it for a test drive before committing to it in a more serious situation.

Taking a deep breath, Iruka stepped out of the alley - several streets down from the Mission Desk, on the Academy side, because he’d learned his lesson in drawing ANBU ire and had no plan to be caught tonight. He walked as quietly as he could, trying to move when the wind sent leaves skittering along the ground, or people’s voices could be heard in the night. The invisibility cloak was all well and good, but it would be pointless if he made a loud noise. 

When he got closer to the mission desk, he was lucky to spot someone heading inside. He walked close behind them - close enough to step in as the door was swinging shut, but not so close as to bump into them. He caught the door, and helped it close with slightly less speed, but he didn’t think anyone at the mission desk noticed the change in acceleration. Once he was inside, it was a lot easier to move around. There were several clerks bustling about, and it took Iruka a minute or two to figure out which doors were the ones leading to record rooms. Once he’d figured out where to go, he followed one of the clerks down the hall, disappointed to discover that the scroll in question was being filed under B-Rank Records, not the A-Rank Records room he’d been hoping for. 

Hopefully a jonin or tokubetsu-jonin would be dropping by soon with a mission scroll. 

About ten minutes later, Iruka’s patience was rewarded with a familiar sight as not one but two jonin walked in the door. One of them was there to pick up a mission, his one-eyed scowl very familiar to Iruka. His annoying neighbor, Hatake Kakashi, seemed to be scowling all around the room. He wrinkled his nose, and seemed to be looking around the room for something, though eventually he seemed to give up.

The other jonin was a bit more battered-looking, a little worse for wear. He had dark hair, and dark eyes that still held soft kindness in them, even though his face bore the telltale splatter of blood. Shisui handed off his mission scroll with a soft smile, and if Iruka hadn’t been so desperate to get into the records room, he probably would have felt guilty about taking advantage of his teammate’s cousin.

If he got caught, people would definitely think Shisui was in on it. Clearly, the solution to this was to not get caught. 

Once Shisui had handed over his scroll, Kakashi nudged him in the ribs, leaning over and murmuring something in his ear. Shisui glanced at him in surprise, then spared a quick glance to the scroll Kakashi was holding, then frowned. Iruka wanted to keep watching them - he’d heard that Kakashi and Shisui were on friendly terms, though he personally didn’t understand the appeal of his prickly neighbor. Shisui was nice to everyone, though, so maybe it was just because Shisui was such a cool guy that it was easy enough for anyone to befriend him.

As the mission desk clerk walked past Iruka, he fell into step behind her, following her back, past the B-Rank Records room and to the A-Rank Records.

No alarms sounded as he passed through the doorway, and he waited near the door, holding his breath, doing his best not to move as the young woman filed the scroll from Shisui into a stacker of some sort, before turning to leave. Once she was gone, Iruka began to explore the room. There were shelves and shelves of scrolls, bound volumes, and sheafs of paper, scattered all over the place. It seemed pretty disorganized, actually. Iruka wasn’t sure if that was intentional, or just because the mission desk staff were overworked and didn’t have time to keep things neat and orderly.

He finally found a section that seemed to be about the Daimyo, and started picking his way through. After a few minutes, he found the section he was looking for - a collection of very small scrolls, labeled DANA - which, as it turned out, was short for “DAIMYO ATTACK - NO ASSASSINATION”, or, in other words, failed attempts to kill the Daimyo. Iruka picked up scrolls 01 through 08, and settled down on the floor to read. His skeleton key and invisibility cloak were still humming gently in his chakra system, but he figured he had a few hours before he started to feel the strain of them in earnest. That should be enough time to get whatever he needed from the scrolls.  

He’d just finished scroll 01 - which had been an interesting if succinct evaluation of how the Daimyo had been attacked and future precautions that should be taken to prevent a repeat attempt - and was starting on scroll 02 when he heard the door creak open. He froze, holding his breath, not moving. 

The footsteps moved surely across the room. Iruka heard the sound of shuffling papers, and then the door closed again. 

He exhaled slowly. It had just been another clerk filing a record. Good. No reason to be worried, then. He glanced back down at scroll 02, clutched tight in his grip, and forced his fingers to loosen, frowning a little at the crease he’d made in the paper. Hopefully nobody would notice that later. 

He continued to read through scrolls 03 and 04, and had nearly finished 05 when the door opened again. Another scroll was deposited, and Iruka thought he was in the clear. Then, to his surprise and mild terror, he heard someone clear their throat from directly overhead.  

It was sheer luck that Iruka didn’t shriek in terror at the sound. He did, however, look up, to see a familiar mask staring down at him from the ceiling, clear disapproval radiating off of Hound like it was somehow embedded in his chakra signature. 

He slowly set the scroll down, preparing to run.

“Don’t,” the ANBU said, sounding incredibly tired. “If you make me chase you, I’ll drag you to Inoichi instead of the Lord Third.” 

Iruka scowled, and then reached under his shirt, peeling away the invisibility cloak with a sigh. He kept the skeleton key running, just in case the room required a visitor pass or something, and removing it would set off alarms. He glanced up at Hound, who dropped from the ceiling to stand in front of Iruka, arms folded over his chest in his usual I am disappointed in you and everything you stand for pose. 

“How’d you find me?” Iruka asked.

“There are regular patrols in these rooms,” Hound answered. “And scrolls don’t typically read themselves.”

Iruka glanced down at the scrolls in his hands. Scrolls he hadn’t bothered to circulate invisibility cloaked chakra through. They must have looked like they were floating in thin air. Like a ghost had been casually helping itself to classified A-Rank Records. He slapped an open palm to his forehead. “I’ll remember that for the next time.”

“There better not be a next time,” Hound growled, sounding uncannily like his namesake. “Get up. We’re going to see the Hokage. Now.”

Iruka sighed, and started to put the scrolls back where he’d found them. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” Hound said, grabbing his wrist with a firm grip. “You bring those with you.”

Iruka sighed. “Sure,” he agreed, tucking them into his belt pouch for safekeeping. 

“Now come with me,” Hound said, and started dragging Iruka back through the stacks, heading for the door. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming, let go of my arm,” Iruka complained.

“You’re lucky I don’t immobilize you and drop your paralyzed body on the front steps of T&I,” Hound grumbled back. “I’m not going to let you go.”

Iruka sighed, and once more stumbled along, trying to match the ANBU’s rapid pace. They left the Records Room, and Hound turned like he was heading for the public area, including the Mission Desk, then paused, appearing somewhat conflicted.

Iruka glanced left, at a ‘supply closet’, and said, helpfully, “We can take the ANBU passage instead,” he jerked his head in the direction of the painfully nondescript door.

Hound whipped his head around to stare hard at Iruka.

Iruka refused to be cowed. “I’ve used them before,” he said, making direct eye contact with the blank holes in Hound’s mask. “Nondescript doors are sooo obvious.”

Hound muttered something under his breath, but he did turn and yank open the supply closet door, reaching up and tugging on a very nondescript three-ring binder. Part of the closet folded backwards, revealing a narrow space between the walls, barely wide enough for a person to fit inside. 

Iruka sighed as Hound resumed dragging him, this time through the walls. Yuuki-sensei was never going to trust him with a jonin-sensei mission scroll again. It was probably for the best, but he was still a little sad about it. 

He also had a feeling he wasn’t going to be able to finish his remaining exploding tag experiments before morning…

---

Hound must have told someone something before he collected Iruka from the A-Rank Records room, because by the time they reached the Hokage’s office, old man Sarutobi was already there with a pot of tea, two cups poured and steaming, and a mildly amused look on his face.

“Ah, Iruka,” he said, his voice lacking a bit of its characteristic warmth, “I thought we weren’t scheduled for tea until the day after tomorrow.”

A nervous feeling bubbled up in his chest, and escaped Iruka’s mouth as a chuckle. “Yeah,” he said, fighting to stop the unwelcome sounds of mirth and only partially succeeding. “Well, I wanted some details about an upcoming mission, and I thought…”

“You thought?” Hound interrupted, shoving Iruka towards the zabuton opposite Hiruzen’s seat at the low chabudai table. “I highly doubt that.”

Iruka turned to fix a glare on him. “I did think,” he protested.

“Iruka,” the Hokage interrupted the impending argument with a soft rebuke. “What were you doing in the records room?”

“I still have clearance, don’t I?” Iruka protested.

“Clearance means you can request documents,” Hound snapped, “not steal them!”

Iruka didn’t know that. “Oh. I just figured it would draw attention if I tried to ask for access to documents like that, so I just figured I would find DANA one through eight myself.”

The old Hokage’s expression shifted ever-so-slightly. “Ah. So you’ve had a chance to see the mission scroll, then?”

“Yeah,” Iruka said. “And it was missing some information.”

“Did you think your jonin-sensei was incapable of requesting the scrolls himself?”

“No,” Iruka said, frowning. “I just didn’t want to bother him.”

“So you bothered everyone else instead,” Hound snapped.

“Hound, please resume your duties,” the Hokage said, his voice crackling with a hint of coldness. 

Iruka was halfway pleased to see the ANBU put in his place, but he also felt a little bit nervous. If the Hokage was snapping at Hound, he was probably pretty mad. Iruka had a feeling that didn’t bode well for his own future. 

“Yes, Lord Third,” the ANBU said, bowing, and then slinking out of the room.

Iruka watched him go, then turned around to see the Hokage eyeing him thoughtfully. 

“What are we going to do with you, Iruka?” the Hokage asked. It sounded more like a rhetorical question than an actual request for information. 

“I don’t know,” Iruka said, because he really didn’t think staying silent was an option, rhetorical question or not. “I guess I should know more about the rules of the mission desk? I’ve only gone in on official business twice before, so…” he shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t realize there was a procedure. I figured anyone with clearance could go in.”

“If that were the case, why would the jonin need to hand their mission scrolls to the clerks?” Hiruzen pointed out. “Wouldn’t they simply go back and file the scrolls themselves?”

That… was a good point. “So the mission desk clerks are the only ones who go into the room?”

“And myself,” old man Sarutobi said. “Or rather, the Hokage, whoever that happens to be.”

“Oh,” Iruka said, and felt a bit foolish. “I didn’t realize. Sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” the Hokage said, picking up his teacup and sipping at it for a moment before setting it back down and saying, bluntly, “Your security clearance could be revoked for this.”

Iruka felt a cold chill run down his back. “You’re not going to have T&I erase my memory, are you?”

The old man stared at Iruka for a long moment, his cold eyes boring into him. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “No, Iruka. But I would like you to tell me what you believe is an appropriate form of restitution for this misstep you’ve taken.”

Iruka picked up his own cup of tea, raising it to his lips, and inhaling the steam. He didn’t actually drink it, just felt the curl of steam in his nose, filling his lungs. He sighed, and watched the tea ripple with his exhale. “Can I think about it?” he asked.

“Have your answer for me by the end of your next mission,” the Hokage said. 

Iruka nodded. He set the teacup back down. “Is there anything else?”

“Did you finish reading?” the Hokage asked, taking another sip from his teacup and gazing over the rim at Iruka with clear curiosity.

“Only through scroll five,” Iruka said, withdrawing the DANA scrolls from his pocket. 

“Go ahead and read the rest of them,” said the Hokage, gesturing vaguely in Iruka’s direction. 

Iruka felt his face heat. He didn’t want to read them anymore, after getting in trouble. But that was dumb; not reading them wouldn’t get him in any less trouble, and it would just leave him less prepared for the upcoming mission. “Okay,” he agreed, then extended the first five scrolls in Hiruzen’s direction. “Here’s the ones I already finished.”

The old man accepted them, and tucked them away in a sleeve of his robe. “Go on,” he encouraged, picking up the teapot and moving to refill his cup. 

Iruka reached out, intercepting the man’s movement. “I got it,” he said.

For a moment, the Hokage looked like he was going to refuse. Then, gradually, he extended the pot to Iruka. “Thank you.”

Iruka refilled the Hokage’s teacup, and then settled back with scroll 06, unrolling it gently, and beginning to read the details of the sixth failed assassination of the Daimyo. The plots seemed to get more convoluted and involved as the scrolls progressed, so clearly the earlier protections instituted were working to stop other types of assassination. It made Iruka wonder what kinds of methods would actually work, if so much thought went into the protection detail. Who would even bother?

He supposed, if it came down to it, it could end up being a contest of strength more than anything else. If all the usual openings were blocked off, the only way to get to the Daimyo would be to brute force your way through.

Iruka grimaced at the thought. That meant that protecting the Daimyo would require the strongest team to keep him safe. But they’d chosen to send Iruka’s team instead. Though, now that he thought about it, Itachi regularly trained and even sometimes joined patrols with Shisui, who was a very famously skilled jonin. If anyone was going to be the person in charge of keeping the Daimyo safe, it would be Itachi.

But was he at a level strong enough to fight someone ready to brute force their way through a team of jonin? He didn’t think even Itachi would be able to handle that. And why would they have two ANBU teams following them secretly? The protections detailed in the scrolls involved tricks and secrets, too, things like having body doubles for the Daimyo, sending different teams in different directions, and more. So maybe Iruka’s team was actually a decoy, and the real protection detail would be a different team. Maybe none of the teams would know who the real defenders would be until after the teams left the village. 

But still, why would a Genin team be counted among the possible defenders? Was it because people would automatically assume they’re a decoy, and not the real thing? Could that be the reason? Itachi was strong enough to fight, but he looked like a baby. Nobody would expect him to be the one actually defending the real Daimyo. Iruka could barely believe it, and he’d been working alongside Itachi since the kid entered the Ninja Academy! The kid was way better than him, though from what Yuuki sensei had said, Iruka hadn’t been recruited for his defensive power anyway. It wasn’t really a secret that Iruka was pretty useless at fighting. Still, he could hold his own in a game of strategy. Sometimes. When he bothered to think things through instead of just acting on instinct. 

Frowning, he rolled closed scroll 06 and began scroll 07. After finishing that, he poured the Hokage another cup of tea, still ignoring his own, and began reading the eighth. As he was poring over it, one detail in particular stood out to him, a pattern he’d discerned throughout the progression of scrolls, “Hey, old man?”

“Yes, Iruka?” the Hokage said, sipping his steaming tea with a mildly bored look on his face.

“These attempts seem to be happening more often recently,” he said.

“That’s because the Daimyo needs to travel more,” the Hokage said, “and our village is responsible for his protection detail when he is outside of his fortress.”

Iruka nodded slowly. “Is it because of the war with the other villages?” he asked.

“Indeed,” the old man said.

“So it’s possible the next attack could be sponsored by Kumogakure or Iwagakure,” Iruka said. 

“Correct.”

“So why doesn’t our team have a chakra sensor assigned to it?” Iruka asked.

The Hokage blinked three times, before saying, in a mildly exasperated tone, “Are you not a chakra sensor, Iruka?”

“Not a good one,” Iruka protested. “The last time I tried to use my chakra-sense on a mission, I got stabbed. Badly.”

“In that case, I recommend you don’t get stabbed this time,” old man Sarutobi said mildly, but with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. 

Iruka was not nearly as amused as him. “Right,” he said, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “I’ll just do that, then.”

“Finished reading?” the Hokage asked, not engaging with the attitude in Iruka’s tone.

“Yeah,” Iruka said.

“Let me know what you’ve decided for your restitution upon your return,” the Hokage reminded him. 

“Are you going to assign a different punishment if I choose something that’s not contrite enough?” Iruka asked.

“Perhaps,” the Hokage answered.

Ugh. Iruka hated guessing games. “I guess I’ll try to choose it well, then.”

The Hokage nodded sagely, collecting the last of the scrolls from Iruka before rising slowly. “I’ll take these back down to the records room,” he said. “Next time, Iruka…” he reached into his sleeve, and withdrew a small tile, about the size of a wooden key used for the shoe lockers in the Ninja Academy. On it was written a single character. “…pass a note or scroll with this word written on it to a clerk at the mission desk. They’ll be able to look up your security clearance status, and retrieve whatever you’re authorized to view.”

Iruka nodded, eyeing the complex character. “Is that pronounced shiki? ” he asked.

“It is,” Hiruzen confirmed. 

Iruka considered that. “Like the same one from ‘knowledge’ and ‘consciousness’?”

“The one and the same.”

“Seems a bit on-the-nose,” Iruka pointed out.

“It’s not intended to be particularly opaque,” the Hokage explained. “But it is a bit more subtle than actively asking ‘ can you look up my security clearance status’ in full view of everyone in the room.”

Iruka had to grant him that. “Fair enough,” he said, and mentally filed that information away for future reference. 

“Now go home,” the Hokage said, sounding like he was equally fond and exasperated with Iruka, “and get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Iruka said. “Thanks for the tea.”

The Hokage waved him off. “I’ll see you when you return from your mission,” he said.

Iruka sighed. He normally looked forward to teatime with the Hokage. But given the circumstances of the upcoming visit… well. He was almost hoping the mission would take longer than expected. 

---

The next morning, Iruka dragged himself out of his futon by sheer force of will. He’d gotten about two hours of sleep, and hadn’t had the energy to work on his tags or seals once he’d gotten home. He was pretty sure someone had told Yuuki sensei what he’d gotten up to the night before. Would his jonin-sensei also know that he was assigned to decide his own punishment, or would he also try to punish Iruka? He wasn’t sure, and it wasn’t making him look forward to the day any more than he had when he’d fallen into bed the night before.

After folding up his mattress, he boiled some water, pouring it over a package of cup noodles. While he waited for them to soften, he puttered around his apartment, gathering up his supplies. He tucked away the chakra paper he’d liberated from the supply depot, along with a small case of writing implements. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t be writing any more seals with his own blood, especially after seeing the gore in the Hyuuga compound. The idea of blood seals made him a bit queasy ever since he’d seen the human experimentation research room hidden under their clan library. Given how unsettled he felt, it seemed prudent to stick to ink and paper, for the time being.

He also shuffled together the few trick tags he’d worked on, and the barrier tags that had dried overnight. It was less than he’d hoped to have on hand, but he wasn’t sure how much time Yuuki-sensei was going to give the team to prepare. He hadn’t noticed an actual timeline listed on the mission scroll, and assumed it was because the Daimyo’s schedule wasn’t fixed. It would be really easy to assassinate someone who advertised their schedule, after all. They’d probably just have a random shinobi pop in and tell them, without warning, that it was time to go. So he’d be best served by keeping his equipment on hand at all times once the mission was officially handed off by Yuuki-sensei.

Once his supplies were gathered, Iruka plopped down at his table and ate his cup noodles. They were getting a little old, he should probably switch flavors from the curry noodles to something else. Maybe he’d buy a couple of seafood flavored ones for his next grocery run?

Then again, he might end up on a mission eating dry rations for a few weeks, so maybe he’d better hold off on buying anything in bulk until he was back. 

Breakfast done, Iruka threw out the styrofoam cup and headed out. He had just closed his door and locked it with a touch of chakra when he head the door next to his swing open. He turned to look, and didn’t bother hiding the grimace on his face as the world’s most annoying neighbor, Hatake Kakashi, stepped out of his room. 

The jonin barely spared him a glance, and didn’t even bother nodding in greeting, just closing his door a bit louder than was probably necessary, adding a touch of chakra to his own door to seal it. 

“Morning,” Iruka greeted, just because Kakashi seemed determined to ignore him and if there was one thing Iruka reveled in, it was drawing attention from the people who insisted on treating him like he was invisible. 

The jonin paused, his lone uncovered eye sliding over to meet his gaze. “Morning,” the man answered. 

Iruka remembered that he’d picked up a mission earlier that evening, and wondered if he had the scroll on him, or if he was just going out shopping or something. 

He must have stared a little too hard, because the jonin turned to face him fully, bracing one hand on his hip, and asked, “Can I help you?”

Iruka felt his face heat. “No,” he said, then felt a bit bad. “I mean. Would you even want to help me?”

“It’s a colloquialism,” Kakashi said, sounding exasperated. “It’s not that deep. Why are you staring?”

“You’re in my way,” Iruka answered, feeling a bit annoyed. “The stairs are that way,” he pointed past Kakashi to where the exit was located.

The jonin stared back at him, nonplussed. “That they are.” He didn’t move.

Iruka wanted to scream. “I have to go meet my team now.”

Kakashi was staring at him, hard. “How’s Shisui?”

Iruka fought to reign in his temper, but feared he was failing. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? You guys seemed pretty buddy-buddy last night.”

Kakashi’s eye narrowed. “When did you see us last…?” He rocked back on his heels slightly, his gaze growing slightly more intense. “Don’t tell me you were at the Mission Desk. What reason would you have to be there?”

Iruka’s mouth went dry. He’d forgotten that he’d been invisible at that time. Nobody had seen him there. And apparently Shisui and Kakashi had only met up inside, and must have parted ways after their respective pickups and dropoffs of their mission scrolls. “Uh,” he said. “I was… um.” He couldn’t say he was requesting information! Kakashi didn’t know about his A-Rank clearance, and he wouldn’t know that Iruka had any reason to be going there, since he didn’t know what Iruka’s mission was. “I wanted to meet Shisui after his mission.”

Kakashi tilted his head slightly. “Shisui likely went directly to the mission desk from his mission. He wouldn’t have detoured just to tell you he was back. Try again.”

Iruka didn’t want to try again. “I would like to go downstairs and meet my Genin team now, please.”

“I would like to know why you were spying on me,” Kakashi said. 

“I was spying on Shisui,” Iruka protested.

“Like I said, you had no way of knowing Shisui was back,” Kakashi said. “The logical conclusion is that you were following me, not Shisui.”

“You would have noticed me following you!” Iruka protested.

“Would I have?” Kakashi narrowed his gaze. “Are you saying maybe I would have… seen you?” He tapped his thumb at the base of his hitai-ate, like he was implying he’d used his sharingan.

But Iruka hadn’t heard the sharingan activate, or at least he hadn’t heard anything like the low bass note that Shisui’s had been. “You weren’t using your sharingan,” Iruka argued. 

“How can you be sure?” Kakashi asked. “Maybe it can see through the hitai-ate.”

“I would have heard it, though,” Iruka shot back.

Kakashi blinked, twice. “Heard it?”

Iruka frowned. “Didn’t Shisui tell you? I can hear the sharingan.”

There was a long stretch of silence, before Kakashi finally said, “You. Can hear. The sharingan?”

Iruka nodded.

“Bullshit.”

Iruka folded his arms. “I’m not lying.”

Kakashi tapped his hitai-ate again. “You sure?”

Iruka frowned. That wasn’t the answer he’d expected. Slowly, hesitantly, he closed his eyes, and listened closely. It took a bit of focus, but once he did, he realized something he’d never caught before - there, in the silence of the open air, he could hear something, much softer than he’d expected. It was the bone-buzzing, low groan of an active chakra - eerily similar to the sound of Shisui’s sharingan, but far less intense. There was something off about it compared to the first time he’d heard it. It crackled more, like there was a tiny bit of feedback, or static interference. Was that because Kakashi’s sharingan wasn’t his own? Did the chakra sound different because it wasn’t an Uchiha’s chakra being channeled through the eye, but instead a Hatake chakra being sucked into it, like water being pulled down a drain? 

“You’re using it now,” Iruka said.

“Lucky guess,” Kakashi said. The chakra kept humming.

“Still using it,” Iruka told him. “How long can you use that for? It sounds like there might be some scarring on the chakra pathways around it.” He frowned. “How much chakra does that eye need, anyway?” He hadn’t bothered asking Shisui about that, since most clans with a kekkei genkai had a chakra system that adapted to their unique ability. But Kakashi wasn’t an Uchiha. He still wasn’t sure exactly how the guy had gotten ahold of one of the Uchiha eyes, or why the Uchiha clan let it be. It was probably because the guy was a genius ninja. Someone that valuable could probably get away with a lot of shit. 

“That’s none of your business,” Kakashi said.

“You can stop now,” Iruka said.

The humming didn’t stop.

“Seriously,” Iruka said. “I showed you I can hear it. Isn’t keeping this going a waste of chakra?” Another minute passed in relative silence, except for the rumble of the sharingan, and the buzzing crackle of Kakashi’s own chakra flooding his implanted eye. The two of them were locked in a silent exchange, neither speaking, until Iruka couldn’t bear the silence any longer. “Are you going to just keep it on forever?”

“Yes,” Kakashi simply said. 

“Why?” Iruka asked, feeling deeply annoyed by how petty the man was being. So he had a big well of chakra to power his unusual eye, good for him. That probably made him feel real special. What a jerk! “It’s not like you have anything to prove to me.”

Kakashi huffed. “I can’t hand everything to you, Umino. Some things you have to figure out on your own.”

“I have to figure out everything on my own!” Iruka yelled, throwing his hands in the air. “What haven’t I figured out on my own? You’re so annoying!”

“Underneath the underneath, kiddo,” Kakashi replied, spinning on his heel and walking away. That stupid undercurrent of crackly chakra running through frayed pathways and the muted rumble of the sharingan followed him. “If you’re half as smart as people seem to think you are, you’ll figure it out.”

Iruka scowled at his retreating figure. This is why he didn’t talk to his neighbor, if he could help it. The guy was so obnoxious. “I will figure it out!” he shouted after the man’s retreating figure. “No thanks to you!”

Kakashi merely lifted a hand in careless farewell, and headed down the stairs. 

Iruka huffed, and leaned back against his door, counting to thirty in his head before tracing Kakashi’s steps and walking down the stairs himself. Fortunately, by the time he reached the ground floor, the jonin was long gone.

“Good riddance,” Iruka muttered under his breath, turning and beginning to jog in the direction of the training grounds. If he didn’t hurry, he was going to be late. And he’d already made a big enough mess for himself last night, he didn’t need to add to it by messing up this morning, too.

Notes:

I didn't plan on that Kakashi confrontation, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I've been using this fic as a palate cleanser between working on my KakaIru Big Bang fic <3 and it's been SO NICE to finally be writing again.

The last three months my work has been so intense, but I finally got a bit of a vacation and I intend to make the most of the time I have to write :D wish me luck!! I'm very excited to see where this fic goes.

For anyone wondering at the worldbuilding/thought behind this chapter that I couldn't include in Iruka POV (some mild spoilers, maybe?):

1. Yes, Kakashi noticed something weird was up when he was at the mission desk (he smelled an extraperson who wasnt visible), and he also told Shisui about it. He had scribbled a little note about it on his scroll, which is why he showed it to Shisui. Shisui is the one who reported directly to the Hokage, while Kakashi geared up and went incognito to the records room. I like to think he figured out it was Iruka because he briefly glanced around the room with his sharingan and realized that the person stealing intel was using the same 'skeleton key' seal that Iruka had invented for his break-in at the Hyuuga compound (because of course Kakashi got permission to look at Inoichi's full report). Since Iruka wasn't actively listening for chakra, the low hum of the sharingan blended into the background noise of the mission desk activity, and he didn't catch it. Then Kakashi got to walk over and clear his throat to startle him. Before this, he also sent a 'stand down' note to shisui, so iruka didn't die that night. Our boy is playing with just so much fire tbh.

2. The character that Iruka needs to show the mission desk staff if he wants access to A-Rank Classified information is 識. They'll then cross-reference his identity with the level of security he's allowed access to. He can fill out a form requesting a specific document, and if he's not cleared to view it, they'll give him a decoy scroll that's blank inside. That's how you find out whether or not the information you want is classified for you. Iruka hasn't had the Mission Desk briefing yet because typically those procedures aren't taught to Genin, but are actually part of Chunin orientation, since that's when shinobi start running solo missions.

Chapter 3: Preparations and Departure

Summary:

If only you could get along with your teammates you're about to accompany on a dangerous mission…

When Iruka arrived on the training field, Itachi was already there, running through advanced taijutsu forms. Iruka watched him for a few seconds, then asked, “Mind if I join?” 

Itachi paused briefly, glancing at Iruka. “If you insist,” he said.

Iruka suddenly didn’t want to participate in the warm-ups anymore. He hadn’t actually said ‘stay out of my way’ in so many words, but he might as well have. “Great,” he said, and jumped in anyway, just because Itachi clearly didn’t want him to join.

It was probably a dumb decision, since his ankle was still not fully recovered from the sparring-with-Shinko incident, but Iruka was pissed off, running on two hours of sleep, and sick of people treating him like he was invisible just because he wasn’t a damn genius. 

He fumbled the advanced form twice before Itachi stopped moving and sighed at him. “You shouldn’t be doing that on your ankle,” he said. 

“Mind your own business,” Iruka snapped, attempting the form one more time, only to feel the tendons in his ankle creak dangerously. He stopped, and barely resisted grabbing his ankle, but he could tell just from the look on Itachi’s face that the younger kid had seen the misstep. 

“Iruka,” Itachi said. “We have a new mission. You shouldn’t be going into the field injured.”

Iruka shut his eyes, just to try and fight back the temper threatening to break loose. “I know.”

“There’s a lot of things that you know but you don’t do anything about,” Itachi pointed out coldly. “Maybe you should consider actually taking the things you know to heart.”

“Maybe you should consider keeping your thoughts to yourself,” Iruka snapped back, giving into impulse and reaching down to tug at the bindings around his ankle, rewrapping it so there was more support around the area that seemed weakest. He pointedly ignored Itachi’s stare as he did this.

“We’re going on another C-rank mission,” Itachi said then, which he technically shouldn’t have known about, but then, Iruka wasn’t supposed to know about it either. Iruka wondered absently who had told him about it. Was it Shisui? It was probably Shisui. “We should be working as a team, not arguing.”

“Great idea,” Iruka said, sparing him an annoyed glance. “You first.”

“I’m not trying to argue,” Itachi said.

“Could have fooled me,” Iruka shot back, standing up and shaking out his ankle. It seemed a little steadier. 

Itachi sighed. “What’s it going to take to get past this… whatever it is?” he waved his hand vaguely in Iruka’s direction, as if the tension between them was a physical thing. 

Iruka glared at him for a long moment. He knew he should apologize, for yelling at Itachi, and for accidentally falling in front of him, and for being rude about it. But he was tired, and he still had to think of a fitting punishment for breaking into the records room even though he hadn’t actually needed to do it, and it was all getting to be too much. So, instead, he pointed at his arm, still healing from the stitches he’d gotten, and stared back at Itachi.

Itachi blinked at Iruka’s arm for a long minute before saying, hesitantly, “…you want me to break your arm?”

Iruka gaped at him for a moment. “No, I want you to apologize for stabbing my arm! Not break it! Why would I want you to break my arm?”

“Whoa, whoa, I don’t know what I’m walking into, but nobody’s breaking anyone’s arm this morning,” Yuuki-sensei said, choosing that moment to appear on the training field, glancing between Iruka and Itachi, a concerned look on his face. “Boys? Are we going to have a problem?”

Itachi was scowling at Iruka. “I’m sorry,” he said primly, “for not realizing you were too stupid to stay out of my way.”

Iruka felt his face flush with anger. “That’s not an apology!” he shouted. “That’s you being a little shit!”

“Iruka, language, please,” Yuuki-sensei said, then turned to Itachi. “He’s right, that’s not an apology.”

“Maybe he should try apologizing for jumping in front of me,” Itachi said, “and I’ll consider giving a real apology.”

Iruka fought very hard not to curl his hands into fists. “I already said I was sorry,” he said.

“No,” Itachi said, “you made a lot of excuses for why you jumped in front of me, but you didn’t apologize.”

“Is this about the last mission?” Yuuki-sensei was still watching both of them closely. “You haven’t worked that out yet?”

“No,” Iruka said glumly.

At the same time, Itachi said, “Maybe if someone had apologized…”

“You two are adults,” Yuuki-sensei said. “Perhaps you should consider acting like it.”

“That’s what I was saying–” Itachi began, but Yuuki-sensei cut him off.

“ Both of you,” he said. “That includes you, Itachi.”

Itachi scowled, but said nothing more. 

Iruka didn’t want to be the first one to give in; Itachi was always the perfect one, after all. Let him be the perfect one in this case, too, and be the first to apologize! 

After a long, drawn out thirty seconds, Yuuki-sensei sighed. “All right,” he said. “I expect you two to work together, even if you’re still holding a grudge. Can you manage that?”

“Yes, sensei,” Itachi said.

“Yeah, I guess,” Iruka agreed at the same time.

“All right. We’ll wait until Shinko arrives to discuss our new mission,” Yuuki-sensei said.

“I’m here!” Shinko called, hurrying onto the field. “What did I miss?”

“Nothing important,” Itachi said primly, shooting a glare in Iruka’s direction.

Iruka resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at Itachi, but only just. 

“All right, let’s go over the mission,” Yuuki-sensei said, pulling out a scroll and handing it to Shinko, who unrolled it, moving to stand between Itachi and Iruka so they could both read it with her. “We’ll be part of an escort team for the Daimyo of the Land of Fire…”

---

The next two days passed with painstaking slowness as their team was considered on-call until the Daimyo appeared. Since his travel plans weren’t advertised, not even Yuuki-sensei knew when he was going to arrive. 

Iruka thought about asking Ibiki at T&I if he knew, but he was afraid that the clerk had heard about his incident in the mission desk, and he’d probably just laugh Iruka out of intelligence headquarters, maybe even demand his books back. Instead, he threw himself into making seals and barrier tags, trying to get creative with it. He’d never been great at medical ninjutsu, but he thought that using a seal or something to either increase or decrease chakra flow to a region of the body was likely to be useful. It could be used defensively or offensively, too, if you tweaked it right it could probably even latch into a chakra system and drain it slowly.

He’d gotten that idea from the way the sharingan eye seemed to be draining away his neighbor’s chakra. It hadn’t been noticeable to him at first, but he’d crossed paths with the Jonin again the next morning, and he’d heard the same draining sound. He wasn’t sure why Kakashi was using his sharingan while it was underneath his hitai-ate, but maybe the sharingan could see through walls? He would have asked Itachi, but they still weren’t speaking to each other. 

Still, the idea of using some sort of technique as a slow power drain seemed like an interesting idea. His skeleton key already functioned on a somewhat similar principle, and it wasn’t too much trouble to find something that could work as a siphon. He built two seals with the principle - one of them siphoned the chakra and pushed it outwards, functioning almost like a shield that buzzed along the skin, absorbing physical blows or certain forms of ninjutsu. It had the same sorts of weaknesses that any chakra did, so Iruka didn’t expect it would do him much good against the chakra types his affinity had a natural weakness to. But it was still something.

The second seal pulled the chakra away and built a secondary pool within the tag itself, something a bit like a battery. He hadn’t figured out if there was a way to hook the battery seal into something else, yet, but it at least pulled chakra away from the source. It was more of an offensive seal at the moment, considering it didn’t do anything but steal chakra and hold it in stasis. 

He might have messed himself up a little bit testing that second one, since his own chakra reserves weren’t exactly the stuff of legends. The lack of sleep probably wasn’t a great idea, either, especially since they were prepping for a C-rank mission. But he was determined to do better this time, to not get injured, to prove that he wasn’t just some waste of space constantly getting in the way of better shinobi.

When the call came, Iruka was about to go to bed, the sky already streaked with orange and yellow clouds, sunrise imminent. 

“Iruka,” Yuuki-sensei said, knocking on the door to Shisui’s apartment. “It’s time.”

Iruka, who was awake and mostly dressed, scrambled to pick up his seals and tags, shoving them into their designated pouches and pockets so he wouldn’t accidentally use the wrong ones. “Coming, coming!” he said, fumbling his self-inking pen and extra chakra paper into his hip pouch. He dropped half the chakra paper and cursed under his breath, picking up the papers and trying not to crumple them as he shoved them into his pouch. 

“Iruka?”

“I said I’m coming!” Iruka yelped, finally stumbling to the door and throwing it open. “Hi.”

“The Daimyo will be here in an hour,” Yuuki-sensei said. “Let’s go.”

Iruka nodded, surprised to see that Shinko and Itachi weren’t with him yet. “Okay.”

Yuuki-sensei turned and jogged down the stairs of the apartments, saying, with only a hint of amusement, “So… jonin apartments?”

Iruka felt his face heat as he realized Yuuki-sensei probably lived in one of the other buildings in the complex. Or maybe the same building, on a different floor? He’d never seen him around, though, so it was probably that first one. “It’s Shisui’s apartment,” he confessed.

“Ah,” Yuuki-sensei said, sounding only slightly less amused than he had before. “Of course.”

Iruka didn’t know what was so funny, and he wasn’t about to ask. “Are we getting Shinko next?” he asked.

“The Uchiha compound is farthest from the center, so we’ll go there last,” Yuuki-sensei confirmed. 

“Okay,” Iruka said. “What if I got Shinko and you got Itachi?”

“I have a better idea,” Yuuki-sensei said, a dangerous gleam in his eye. “You go get Itachi, I’ll get Shinko.”

Iruka almost stopped running. “What?”

“You know where he lives, right?” Yuuki-sensei said. “Do you know where Shinko lives?”

He didn’t. “No.”

“Right, so you go get Itachi, I’ll get Shinko,” Yuuki-sensei waved him off. “Go on.”

Itachi wasn’t going to listen to Iruka. Although, it was for a mission, so maybe he’d make an exception? Iruka grimaced. “Okay,” he agreed. “But for the record, I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Noted,” Yuuki-sensei said, and then blurred into nothing, only a few leaves drifting down in the wake of his departure.

What was it with jonin and their disappearing acts? Iruka was sick of it. Sighing, he turned and began running in the direction of the Uchiha compound. 

It didn’t take long for him to reach the gates, and he should have expected that the lemon-faces only got worse the later at night (or earlier in the morning) they were bothered, but somehow it hadn’t occurred to him until he was trying to talk his way in. 

“I’m here for Itachi,” Iruka said, for the third time. “We’re needed for a C-Rank mission.”

“You can wait here for his jonin-sensei,” the Uchiha guard said, scowling at Iruka. 

“Can you at least try and talk to him?” Iruka insisted. “Send a message?”

“You don’t have clearance to enter,” the guard said, “and I’m sure that Lord Fugaku will rise before long. He’ll come here to review the security reports within two hours.”

“I don’t have time for that!” Iruka snapped, wishing he hadn’t helped the Uchiha clan improve their security protocols, because he could have really used the weaknesses to bust in at the moment. “Our jonin-sensei is waiting for us!”

“Iruka?” someone called his name from inside the gates, a figure that was vaguely familiar, and too tall to be Itachi, but not nearly large enough to be Fugaku. His voice was easily recognizable.

Iruka turned away from the guard. “Shisui?”

“What are you doing up so early?” Shisui asked, jogging over to the gate, walking past the guard, and folding his arms over his chest. “Is something wrong?”

“Yuuki-sensei just told me to get Itachi,” Iruka explained. “Our mission… we leave in an hour.”

One of Shisui’s eyebrows rose. “An hour?”

“Yeah,” Iruka said. “So I can’t exactly wait for people to start waking up before getting him.” He glared pointedly at the guard, who didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed at the accusation. 

“I’ll get him,” Shisui said. “Wait here, okay?”

Iruka started to nod, then paused mid-nod, realizing it was pointless since Shisui was already gone, pulling the same disappearing trick that most of the jonin shinobi he knew seemed so enamored of, leaving only drifting leaves in his wake. Iruka then turned to the guard and scowled. “See? Was that so hard?”

The guard still didn’t look ashamed. He also didn’t acknowledge Iruka’s comment verbally. The lemon-face got a bit more sour, though.

In a matter of minutes, Itachi came running, barely sparing a glance at Uchiha Lemon-Face before telling Iruka, “I’m here, let’s go.” 

“We leave in under an hour,” Iruka told him. “You remember the rendezvous point?”

Itachi treated him to an irritated look. “Of course I do,” he said. “Do you ?” 

“Of course,” Iruka parroted back at him. “What, you think I would forget?”

Itachi didn’t answer verbally, just gave Iruka one of his patented looks.  

Iruka decided not to engage. “Come on,” he said instead, and turned to run, Itachi hot on his heels.

---

It turned out that Iruka’s team didn't actually get to meet the Daimyo, only Yuuki-sensei and two ANBU (presumably the captains of the two backup teams that would be following them) actually had the chance to see him. It was a little disappointing, but considering how often Iruka had fucked up their previous missions, he was fine with staying away from the Daimyo and not drawing unnecessary attention.

That's also why he didn’t comment on the fact that he had something of a history with one of the ANBU on their support teams. He only caught a glimpse, since he wasn’t one of the captains with Yuuki-sensei, but Iruka could recognize a mask like Hound’s with barely a glance. 

It made him wonder a little bit, why they had two black ops teams assigned to them. His theories were that either they expected to do a lot of killing on the trip, or that they thought the reason the Daimyo kept getting targeted was due to an inside job. ANBU wasn’t internal affairs, exactly, but they worked closely with T&I, so it made sense if they needed to drag some suspects back to Konoha then an ANBU or intelligence team would need to be dispatched. 

Since intelligence division shinobi tended to operate solo far more often than ANBU, it made sense to hand the backup role to them, instead of a regular squad of jonin or even a single T&I operative. 

Iruka was just glad that they weren’t being supported by a jonin squad, because he didn’t think he’d be able to handle it if one of the support squads included Shisui. Or worse, his neighbor Kakashi. The thought sent a shudder down his spine. At least Hound was someone who already expected nothing of him, so if he fucked up again he wouldn’t be a massive disappointment to even more people. 

Within ten minutes of the Daimyo arriving, Yuuki-sensei and their teams handed off with the previous escort team, and they were on the road. 

The plan was to take about a week  getting the Daimyo and his small entourage of clerks and servants to the designated point on the map, at which point they would be handing off to a third team. 

The first day went fine, though Iruka was so delirious from lack of sleep and chakra exhaustion that he was practically dead on his feet. He had the excuse of “listening for chapkra” to justify why he kept closing his eyes, but the excuse was wearing thin. Or maybe he just looked so tired that nobody believed him. It wasn’t like he had a mirror to check how deep the circles under his eyes were. Even Itachi didn't say anything sarcastic to him, so he must have looked pretty bad.

After a decent night's sleep, the second day went a bit easier. They were able to spot some poorly-concealed bandits and take them out in a matter of minutes; the Daimyo never even realized there was trouble outside his palanquin. That was all they encountered, and they hadn't even taken any injuries from the incident, much less casualties.

They passed through the toxic plant zone without anyone falling victim to the dangerous flora, and then carried on through the next day with no troubles. By the fourth day, Iruka was starting to feel pretty good about his chances of finishing this C-rank mission without fucking it up. 

So, naturally, that’s when everything went horribly, irrevocably wrong.

Notes:

I'm sorry it's so short… mission fics are hard…

 

…also sorry for the cliffhanger. I'll be faster churning out the next chapter, I promise!! The cliffhanger was just too good to pass up

Chapter 4: Wandering Eyes

Summary:

Iruka steals the spotlight.

The day started out as well as could be expected when you were sleeping on the ground and taking watch halfway through the night, resulting in a lot of interrupted sleep. Itachi and Iruka still weren’t really talking to each other, and Yuuki-sensei was running interference somewhat, while Shinko just glared at them in turn and shook her head in disbelief whenever they got too ridiculous.

When they took a break around midday to eat, Shinko complained about being sore from the rocky terrain they’d slept on the previous night, Iruka commented something about how he missed his futon, too.

Apparently, this casual conversation was just too much for Itachi, who set his ration pack aside to scowl at Iruka and say, “Don’t you mean Shisui’s futon?”

Iruka felt his face heat at the accusatory tone. “I mean, technically, I guess?” he said, aiming for lighthearted and somewhat missing the mark. 

Shinko was glancing between Iruka and Itachi, sparing most of her irritation for Itachi this time, since he’d been the one to interrupt a perfectly normal conversation with some sort of agenda against Iruka specifically.

“I’m just saying,” Itachi said, scowling, “It’s not your apartment, and not your futon.”

Iruka bit back the urge to tell Itachi if Shisui wanted it back so badly he could damn well tell Iruka himself. But he didn’t really want to run the risk of Itachi taking him up on that offer, since he still wasn’t making enough for private apartment rent, and there still weren’t any openings in the genin apartments, as far as he knew. A lot of them had been destroyed in the kyuubi attack, and the jonin and chunin apartments had gotten precedence when it came to rebuilding. Besides, from what he heard, they weren’t nearly as nice as the jonin apartments. 

“Fine,” is what Iruka said, instead of what he was burning to say, since he didn’t want to fight any more. 

Shinko looked relieved, and Yuuki-sensei returned his attention more fully to his meal, but apparently Itachi wasn’t done saying his piece, because he kept going.

“Are you planning on ever giving it back?” he asked. “He only moved out to stay home with his ailing father, you know.”

Iruka almost commented on how funny it was to hear a sophisticated phrase like ‘ailing father’ come out of a little kid’s mouth instead of ‘sick dad’ or something more normal, when his brain caught up with the meaning of what he’d said. “Wait, Shisui moved out because his dad’s sick?” Iruka asked, forsaking his own food momentarily to look at Itachi.

Itachi just stared blankly at Iruka.

“So why would he want to move back in?” Iruka asked, feeling like this was a very weird direction for Itachi to take this conversation. “If he’s trying to be closer to his father, I mean. Does he not want to stay home anymore?”

Itachi didn’t even blink before solemnly stating, “His father died two months ago, Iruka. He has no reason to stay in that house anymore.”

Iruka felt the words like a blow to the chest. “What?”

Itachi just stared, as if daring Iruka to argue.

“Two months?” Iruka repeated, feeling stupid. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Itachi continued to stare at Iruka. “You didn’t ask.”

There had to have been a funeral. He understood why he hadn’t been invited - he wasn’t that close to the Uchiha family, after all. “When…?” he couldn’t make himself say the words. Did Itachi think he wouldn’t have gone to a funeral, had he been invited? Or worse, had Fugaku or Mikoto thought he might cause trouble, and that’s why they hadn’t said anything to him about it?

Shisui hadn’t seemed any different, at least not in the few moments Iruka had interacted with him lately. But people didn’t all wear their hearts on their sleeves the way Iruka did – it was something he’d been criticized for more than once by his academy teachers, after all. The Uchiha Clan was a lemon-faced bunch, but they weren’t the type to publicly mourn, he didn’t think. He still felt awful for not knowing. 

“The point isn’t when,” Itachi said, sounding annoyed. “It’s that you should have been looking for a place of your own a long time before this. But you’re completely content being in the way,” he stared sharply at Iruka. 

This again. Iruka felt his face heat and his heart start to pound faster. Why did it always come back to this? That Iruka was a waste of space, a burden, someone nobody wanted to deal with and nobody cared about. No matter where he went or what he did, he was always in somebody’s way. And no matter how hard he tried to be better, it didn’t seem to make a difference. 

“Sorry, I guess I’ll work on that,” Iruka said bitterly. “It’s been a little difficult staying on top of things when I’m injured.” He almost thought about pointing at his arm, but restrained himself, if barely.

Itachi sighed heavily. “This is exactly my point,” he snapped. “You keep acting like you’re the only person in trouble, and you don’t seem to care about who you inconvenience with your problems. I wish you’d… stay out of the way, instead of always inserting yourself in the middle of everything, demanding attention.”

“I think we’ll stop there,” Yuuki-sensei said, before Iruka could even fully process Itachi’s words, much less formulate a response. “Itachi, that’s a bit of an overstatement, don’t you think?”

Itachi stared sullenly at Yuuki-sensei without answering.

After a long, awkward moment of silence, Yuuki-sensei sighed, and apparently gave up on the matter, returning to his rations.

Iruka just stared at his own food, not hungry anymore. He should eat, though, especially since he didn’t want Itachi sighing and accusing him of being dramatic and trying to demand attention by not eating. He mechanically chewed and swallowed the rest of his meal, though he couldn’t have said afterwards what it tasted like, or if he’d been full by the end of the meal or not. Everything felt empty and gray, he was so sick it was a miracle he didn’t throw up his meal when they resumed their journey. 

With nothing better to do than dwell on how badly this fight with Itachi was going, Iruka threw himself into listening for unfamiliar chakra. And familiar chakra, too, since he knew Hound was there. He’d never really tried listening for individual people before, but he thought Hound might be familiar after so long. 

He wasn’t able to pick up any of the ANBU teams following them, not even Hound. Which made since, since the man had been quite invisible to Iruka’s ears during most of their encounters. Not that he’d really tried very hard to learn what the man sounded like. So the whole thing was more of an exercise in futility.

He did notice something a bit odd, after a little while, though. He wondered if his neighbor, Kakashi, might be one of the ANBU that was trailing them. Or maybe Shisui was an ANBU? Though he supposed it could have been any Uchiha, really. He just thought he heard the barest low hum that reminded him of the way Shisui’s sharingan had sounded. It was lacking the telltale chakra being pulled down a drain sound that his neighbor’s sharingan seemed to make, so he was willing to write off the sound as belonging to Kakashi, anyway. 

The weird part was that the sound of the sharingan was getting gradually closer. Like maybe one of the support teams had spotted an enemy and was moving to intercept them? They were supposed to be further back, but if they’d encountered a hostile force then it made sense for them to cut them off before they reached the Daimyo.

This area was supposedly home to several bandits, after all. It would be good to keep them away from the Daimyo. 

He heard the hum of chakra – that bass note he was almost certain was the sharingan still barely audible – flicker out briefly, and he lost “sight” of whoever it had been. Ahead, Yuuki-sensei was signalling for the caravan to proceed with caution. Iruka spared a moment to examine the area more closely - maybe Yuuki-sensei had noticed the bandits, too? 

He hung back a little bit, moving closer to the Daimyo’s palanquin. Shinko and one of the two Guardian Ninja bodyguards he’d brought with him were bringing up the rear, while Yuuki-sensei and the other bodyguard were at the front of the procession, with himself and Itachi positioned more centrally. At first, Iruka didn’t notice anything particularly concerning, though after a moment he spotted masked man some distance away, making his way along the road towards them. He didn’t seem inclined to stop, which was probably okay as long as he kept to one side. Shrugging off the appearance of the traveler, and Iruka decided he’d be best served trusting his sensei to be a decent judge of potential danger the lone traveler presented. 

Not too far from where Iruka was plodding along, Itachi frowned, and glanced down to the road beneath their feet. “Too many people are watching that traveler,” he said, more to himself and than actively including Iruka in the conversation. “If he has a genjutsu trigger–” 

Iruka looked at Itachi, who had paused mid-sentence. Then, he realized the Daimyo’s palanquin beside them had also stopped, and he turned to look at Shinko, who was staring dazedly ahead, towards the lone masked figure. Even Yuuki-sensei seemed frozen. 

Iruka wanted to look at the strange man now, to see what could have possibly drawn them all up short, but Itachi was tense, and Iruka thought maybe now would be a bad time to start looking around. Instead, despite his better judgement, he closed his eyes and listened for chakra, even as he fumbled in his pouch for one of his tags. His fingers tightened around one of the sheets of paper, and he said, “Itachi, is this genjutsu?”

“Yes,” Itachi muttered under his voice. “Move up. We need to stay between him and the Daimyo.”

At least the ANBU backup teams were close. Iruka could hear that sharingan rumble nearby, still. “I have a tag that might help,” Iruka said. “I haven’t tested it yet, but,” genjutsu operated by taking over the target’s chakra system and manipulating it. Maybe, if he could create a chakra imbalance, the targets would be able to resist the genjutsu more easily. 

He shook out one of the battery-type seals he’d prepared what had ended up being the morning of their departure, and rather than moving forward, like Itachi had suggested, he stepped back and slapped it against Shinko’s stomach. He peeled it away as soon as he heard her gasp, and sure enough, a moment later, she was hissing, “That’s genjutsu!”

“Come on,” Iruka muttered, grabbing her elbow and pulling her forward, stepping up beside Itachi, who still hadn’t lifted his head. “We gotta protect the Daimyo.”

“Shinko, Iruka, good,” Itachi said. “Iruka, do you have something to revive the others?” He probably meant Yuuki-sensei and the two guardian ninja. 

“I do,” Iruka said, and didn’t want to say that he didn’t like his odds of getting to them if the stranger didn’t want them woken. 

As if reading the hesitation in his voice, Itachi looked at him sharply. “We need the backup, Iruka.”

He wasn’t wrong, but it was sure nice for him, since he wouldn’t be the one drawing attention to himself by trying to break some high-level visual genjutsu. 

Shinko was shaking, her hands trembling so badly Iruka thought she’d probably fumble a shuriken if she even tried to grab one. Itachi, on the other hand, seemed way too calm for the situation. As for Iruka, he still felt like he was going to throw up, just not because he was upset by the earlier conversation anymore.

“Clever, clever,” the strange masked man said, raising his voice to be heard by the three of them, still calmly striding towards them, drawing closer to Yuuki-sensei and the guardian ninja, both of whom were still frozen. He moved easily, Iruka could hear his footfalls as he approached, his pace as relaxed and laid-back as if he were just out for an afternoon stroll and not currently holding a genjutsu over multiple Konoha jonin like it was child’s play. “I do so love to see the younger generation honing their skills. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to step aside. I have business with the Daimyo, you see.”

“No, actually, we don’t see,” Itachi muttered, his eyes closed. Iruka thought maybe he should close his eyes, too, but the man was still out of visual range so long as Iruka kept his eyes trained on the ground. He’d have to shut his eyes to fight, though.

Fumbling in his pouch, Iruka found another seal. He looked down at it to make sure it was another battery seal, confirmed it was, and then dared a quick glance in Yuuki-sensei’s direction. The man was getting closer, and Iruka really didn’t trust the guy to actually leave them alone even if he did get access to the Daimyo. It would be too easy to kill them as he walked by, did he really think someone with this much power would just let any witnesses walk away?

Curling his fingers around the seal, Iruka took a deep breath, steeling himself. He still couldn’t identify individuals by their chakra unless they were actively channeling, but surely this man’s genjutsu would be audible, given the amount of power he had to be using to hold down three jonin. He just needed to get to Yuuki-sensei and slap the battery on for a few seconds, that should be enough to disrupt the genjutsu, unbalancing the circulation of the chakra sufficiently to help Yuuki-sensei break free. If he was really fast, he might make it to the guardian ninja, too, but Iruka wasn’t counting on being that good. He was still just a genin, after all.

“I wouldn’t do anything foolish,” the man called out in a sing-song tone, his footsteps growing closer. “Stand down and I won’t need to do anything… unpleasant.”

The way he said the word unpleasant sent shudders down Iruka’s spine. 

“Iruka…” Shinko said, noticing the seal in his hand, “…don’t…”

“Too late,” Iruka whispered, and then he jumped. He wished he knew how to do that stupid disappear and leave a leaf behind thing that all the jonin in Konoha seemed to be so good at, but all he could do was basic substitutions, since the body flicker technique took more chakra than he was willing to spare. He jumped from his position, swapping places with a large rock, and then flat-out running as hard as he could towards Yuuki-sensei. 

Before he could reach him, though, an unfamiliar figure blinked into view right in front of him. Of fucking course the enemy could body flicker. It was just Iruka’s luck that everyone except him had the chakra reserves for that sort of bullshit. 

Panicking, Iruka flung his hand out, the one with the battery seal in it. He’d hoped to maybe disrupt the chakra flow of his enemy, but instead, his hand passed right through him.

An illusion? Was he caught in the genjutsu after all? Iruka had the sudden horrified thought that maybe he hadn’t moved at all, that Itachi was the only one still free from the genjutsu’s hold. Or maybe Itachi’s freedom had been part of the illusion, too?

He didn’t know what was real. Shutting his eyes, Iruka slapped the battery against his own chest, instead, and felt a lurch of chakra, distinct and uncomfortable, pulling from his well of chakra and disappearing into the battery.

Nothing else changed, except that Iruka heard the low rumble of the sharingan, the sucking pull of chakra being siphoned, and then the distinct metallic rasp of a sword being unsheathed. 

Pulling the chakra siphon away from his chest, Iruka threw himself to the side, already knowing anything he did would be too little, too late. Even as he moved, he felt a sharp pain shearing from his hip across his chest in a thin line. Despite the edge of the blade being so thin, the blood that followed the strike was more than enough cause for concern. Iruka hit the ground hard, rolling three or four times (he wasn’t really counting, too busy hoping he wasn’t losing too much blood) before coming to rest flat on his back. 

He really should have worked on that seal variation that functioned like healing chakra, because he didn’t think the battery seals were going to be doing him much good at this rate. 

“Iruka!” Shinko cried, crouching beside him. 

Itachi stood a bit farther ahead, legs set in a wide stance, facing towards the masked man. He was gripping a kunai tight in one hand, placing himself bodily between the masked man and the Daimyo. 

“Really?” the masked man said, voice light and teasing even as he stalked forward, Iruka’s blood slipping down the blade, pooling at the tip, dripping on the ground with each step he took. He gave Itachi an obvious once-over as he approached, saying, “You think a little thing like you is going to stop me?”

Iruka could feel his eyelids sliding closed, and fought against the blackness crowding at the corners of his vision. Shinko had her hands hovering over his chest, and he could hear the high-pitched whine of her healing chakra as she did her best to staunch the bleeding. She was making decent progress, his skin starting to itch where it was beginning to close up again. The scarring wouldn’t be pretty, but he’d live, at least.

“It’s my mission,” Itachi replied, his young voice not wavering even a bit, even as the man stalked closer. “I can’t let you reach the Daimyo.”

Despite his whole attention being riveted on the scene unfolding before him, Iruka felt a tickle in his chest seize into something more obstructive, and he coughed involuntarily, probably re-opening much of the wound that Shinko had been working so hard to treat. The sound of it made the masked man hesitate, only for a moment, and Itachi took the opening instantly. He leaped forward, executing the perfect body flicker Iruka hadn’t been able to, appearing beside the man instantaneously, his kunai aimed precise and true…

Except, just like Iruka, the strike passed harmlessly through empty air, and Itachi’s follow-through made him stumble forward. 

Iruka was moving before he fully realized he was able to move, summoning up chakra reserves he hadn’t realized lay untapped, appearing right where he knew Itachi would be, because he knew the masked guy wasn’t going to stand and take Itachi’s attack any more than he’d taken Iruka’s. He knew how Itachi fought, he knew how he moved, and he knew exactly where he’d be when the strike didn’t land. He practically body-slammed into Itachi, barely having enough time to think about how fortunate he was that Itachi didn’t stab him in the arm again, before taking a far more serious hit from the masked man’s sword, as it bit much deeper into his side than the shallow slash across his torso. 

Itachi turned, eyes wide, catching Iruka’s frantic look before they both turned to see the masked man looming over them, sword already in motion to deliver a finishing blow…

And then, impossibly, his strike was parried by the severe blade of an ANBU tanto. 

The masked man leaped back from the ANBU who had saved them both, only to be nearly intercepted by two more ANBU. Sensing he was outmanned if not outclassed, he turned and flickered away, vanishing into emptiness. 

“Iruka, what the hell!” Itachi was shaking him, which was really rude because Iruka’s side was hurting a lot.

Like, ‘worse than that time he’d been stabbed in the stomach’ a lot. 

Calm down, Iruka tried to say to Itachi, except all he could manage was “Ca–” and then he coughed again, only this time he couldn’t seem to stop for several agonizing seconds, and when he was done, his whole body hurt even more. 

“What were you thinking?” Itachi hissed, already pawing at Iruka’s shirt, probably trying to get at the wound so he could staunch the bleeding. Ever the genius, he was already going through the field wound dressing protocols. Iruka would have laughed if he didn’t think it was going to hurt more than it was worth. 

“You know me,” he managed to say without hurting himself too much. He wasn’t sure why he found the situation so funny. Blood loss, maybe? He felt really dizzy, and his side wasn’t hurting as much, because he felt a little bit floaty, and nauseous. He hoped he didn’t throw up, that would smell really bad, and rations tasted even worse coming up than they did going down. “Always getting in the way.”

“That’s not funny, Iruka,” Itachi hissed, tearing his shirt and pressing against his side and – ohhh, there’s the pain again, yep, still bad.

“Wasn’t trying to be funny,” Iruka said, although the situation did feel a little humorous to him. Who would have thought that bumping into Itachi in the field would actually do him good, this time? It had kind of backfired on Iruka’s end, but at least Itachi made it out unscathed. Iruka was starting to wonder if he was cursed to get some sort of blade injury on every mission. 

“Yuuki-sensei!” Itachi shouted, ignoring Iruka’s reply. “I can’t stop the bleeding!”

One of their ANBU backup team members crouched beside them. 

Iruka groaned, but not from pain. “You again!” Seriously, what was it with Hound and always seeing him at his worst? It was getting old fast.

“Try this,” Hound said, handing something to Itachi, ignoring Iruka’s comment. 

Of course he would. It was Hound.

In any case, seeing that Itachi and the ANBU had matters under control, Iruka decided the only sensible thing left to do was close his eyes and– 

Itachi slapped him. “Don’t fall asleep,” he ordered.

“It’s funny,” Iruka said blearily, “That after all this time you still think you can tell me what to do.”

“Stop talking,” Itachi said, “and don’t move.” He was prodding Iruka’s side insistently, and the ANBU seemed to be helping with the poke Iruka’s injury agenda. “And don’t sleep,” he repeated, even more urgently than the last time.

Iruka blinked slow. He wanted to say he wasn’t going to sleep, just rest his eyes, except he couldn’t seem to make his mouth move anymore. He felt really dizzy, like he was falling, even though he was already lying on his back on the solid ground. It was like motion sickness, his stomach rolling like he really was going to puke. The black was creeping in at the corners of his vision again, too. 

“Come on,” Itachi said, glancing up from Iruka’s side long enough to slap Iruka again. It wasn’t really a hard slap, just an attention-getting sort of slap. “Stay with us.”

The slap didn’t really work any better than his verbal commands had, because Iruka’s eyes were just… closing. Of their own volition. He was powerless to stop them. His hearing was fading in and out, a ringing in his ears drowning out the voices, footsteps, almost everything that was happening around them, except for the low, unrelenting hum of a sharingan, and the sound of crackling chakra being pulled like water down an unstopped drain.

Then, his eyes fell closed, and the darkness overcame him.

Notes:

ahhhhh this chapter was SO HARD to write. Can't believe I made myself write an entire combat chapter, why would i do this to myself???? (it had to be done)

i was hindered in no small part by the fact that i do not own the itachi shinden book, nor did i bother to try and find it anywhere, so i was flying half-blind off a narutopedia summary and the little clip at the end of one of the genin itachi shippuden flashback episodes. Hopefully it delivered, I have been hyping myself up SO MUCH for this fic, and I really want it to hit the notes I am aiming for. This fic has been one of the hardest ones in the series thus far, because it's such a pivotal moment in both Itachi and Iruka's journeys, I think.

I really hope you liked this, it was really really hard, but I think ultimately it paid off. Thank you for reading.

Chapter 5: Unwelcome Sight

Summary:

Iruka needs serious medical intervention. If only his team was more inclined to take his injuries seriously...

Iruka was getting really sick of stabbings, he decided, as his consciousness returned what felt like an instant later but was likely at least a few minutes. His eyes were closed, but it didn’t stop him from hearing the residual chaos that had overaken the group in the wake of the sudden attack. There were people walking to-and-fro, mutters, and what sounded like at least one of the two ANBU teams rounding up the rest of the shinobi who had been present for the atttack, demanding intel.

Beside him, he could hear Shinko gasping for breath, clearly at her limit with all the healing chakra she was pumping into him. Absently, he thought how convenient it would be if he knew how to actually push the chakra back out of his battery seals. But he hadn’t gotten that far. He also felt bad that he’d needed to pull chakra out of Shinko’s system just to get her awakened from the genjutsu. It probably wasn’t making this healing any easier.

“I don’t have the skill to fix this,” she said, her chakra crackling and popping ominously, like a campfire that had been fed branches full of sap. Her affinity also wasn’t the same as Iruka’s, which probably didn’t help matters much. 

“Do what you can, and we’ll head out once he’s stable. We need to get moving,” Yuuki-sensei said. 

Iruka heard a scuffing sound at his side, and realized Itachi was still there, though now he’d clambered to his feet.

“Get moving?” he asked, sounding uncharacteristically stubborn. Usually he used that tone on Iruka, not his superiors.

“We have a mission to complete,” Yuuki-sensei said, almost dismissively.

“Iruka’s critically injured,” Itachi argued. “He’s still losing blood.”

Damn, Iruka thought, you’d think I would stay unconscious if I was still bleeding.  

“The mission comes first,” Yuuki-sensei said firmly, his tone uncompromising.

“I know, but…”

Iruka sank once more into unconsciousness. 

---

The next time he woke, it was because he was being lifted upright, and it was a singularly unpleasant experience. “Ugh,” he said, because it was all he could manage to say when the pain was so intense he thought he might choke on it. 

“Hang in there,” Itachi said, “The rendezvous point is only two days away.” 

Iruka distantly heard Shinko mutter something under her breath, but he couldn’t tell what, exactly, she said. Whatever it was, she didn’t sound happy.

He wasn’t exactly happy either, but the pain took his breath away, so he didn’t have much of a chance to voice his own objections. Not being able to breathe very well also made it hard to stay awake, and his awareness took the opportunity to once more slip away.

---

ITACHI

---

“Sensei, he’s getting worse.” 

Itachi could not bear to take his eyes off Iruka for more than a few seconds at a time. He had no explanation for this irrational need to watch his comrade, merely a nagging suspicion that it was his own watchful gaze that kept Iruka’s shallow breaths steady. Those miniscule rises and falls of his chest were the only proof of life at the moment, as he had been fading in and out of consciousness. As time dragged on, Iruka had grown less coherent in the few instances he was awake, and he began to fade back into unconsciousness for increasing lengths of time, his inhales and exhales growing more thready with each passing minute. 

His teammate was sickly-looking, his skin almost as pale as Itachi’s after all the blood he’d lost. Iruka’s wounds had been bandaged up, and his injuries had been treated to the best of their meager abilities. However, Shinko had been certain there was something else, perhaps a poison, that was a confounding factor in the healing process. She wasn’t rated for more than basic field medicine, though, and had no idea what to look for in particular. As much as Itachi wished to help, he knew his own talents did not lie in that field, and he would have been able to provide even less insight than what Shinko had managed. 

Mere minutes after the assailant had run in the face of their ANBU support squads’ arrival, Yuuki-sensei had insisted the entire caravan keep moving, which was only logical. They needed to remove the Daimyo from such a dangerous situation, and their ANBU support had moved to an open presence, stationed closer to them in case another threat revealed itself.

It made sense. It was a perfectly rational decision. It was mission-critical that they keep moving. And yet…

Iruka wasn’t doing well, and Itachi felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach every time he looked at him. It was an ill-feeling that had nothing to do with the tasteless ration bars they had consumed at their noon meal, nor was it a physiological effect brought on by exposure to a genjutsu. 

No, this sickening feeling was certainly related to the aftermath of battle, and had everything to do with guilt.

He should have been the one lying there on the makeshift gurney, being dragged behind the Daimyo’s palanquin. He had been reckless, and he had overestimated his own abilities in the heat of the moment. He had been foolish enough to overestimate himself, and underestimate the power of an attacker who had been able to singlehandedly ensnare all of the real threats in a nigh-instantaneous ocular genjutsu. 

Itachi had thought he was better, stronger, faster. He had been training with Shisui, he was nearly at an equal level with him at this point in his training, and he had been certain that he was capable of landing a hit while the strange assailant was distracted. 

Iruka had seen through the ruse that Itachi had stumbled right into. He had seen it despite having already taken one hit. Itachi had thought Iruka’s own stumble and subsequent injury had been the result of poor planning, had assumed that the man was simply faster than Iruka could dodge, right up until his kunai sliced through thin air instead of the target in front of him. In that moment, he had finally realized that he was going to pay for his hubris.

Except, then, he hadn’t.

Iruka had seen, had known what was going to happen, and he had used the last of his chakra to attempt a body flicker – a technique that he could barely manage on a good day – to protect Itachi from the incoming strike. 

That move may have saved Itachi, but it had been Iruka’s undoing. He’d pushed himself all the way to chakra exhaustion, which meant there was precious little Shinko could do to heal him, his own body so weak it wasn’t making any effort to heal itself. 

And it seemed like nobody cared!  

Well, in fairness to Shinko, she pushed herself as close to chakra-exhaustion as she could manage in a desperate fight to keep Iruka alive. But Yuuki-sensei, the Daimyo’s Guardian Ninja, and the ANBU all seemed utterly indifferent to the situation. 

If anything, they seemed mildly annoyed by the way that carrying Iruka was slowing them down. Even Yuuki-sensei didn’t seem too bothered by their attitudes, instead pressing onwards, his main focus seeming to be the completion of the mission, even if it meant working with judgemental shinobi. It was infuriating, especially since Iruka had been the one on the front lines in the first place, and the ANBU hadn’t even seen combat before the attacker had fled. 

Still, Itachi bore the frustration and guilt without a word, until nightfall approached and one of the ANBU captains pulled Yuuki-sensei aside to demand they keep moving in order to reach the rendezvous point more quickly, and Itachi had no choice but to speak up.

“I’m aware, Itachi,” Yuuki-sensei had said dismissively, waving him off.

Shinko looked exhausted, too tired to even fight to be heard, and at this point Iruka had been unconscious for over an hour following a brief period of wakefulness. “He needs to rest,” Itachi said, feeling the kernel of stubbornness in his chest clench, a little bit like a fist. 

“Our priority is the Daimyo,” the ANBU said, sparing a moment to glare at Itachi. His mask was carved to look like a monkey. 

Itachi tucked that information into the back of his mind. He wasn’t entirely certain why. It wasn’t like it would be proper to exact revenge for making the logical, mission-critical decision to keep moving through the night. Nonetheless, he committed the image to memory. He wasn’t at his best or most logical, at the moment, which he felt was sufficient justification for this lapse in judgement.

“We could leave him behind,” the captain of the second ANBU team suggested, appearing beside Yuuki-sensei without warning. “He’s been slowing our progress all day.”

Itachi wanted to point out that the Daimyo’s palanquin wasn’t exactly a fast-moving vehicle, either, but he was still seething with rage, and he knew that if he spoke now, he was likely to say words with the potential to bring dishonor upon himself and his family name, and such uncouth behavior wouldn’t even do Iruka any good. It was one thing to sacrifice honor when some good would come of it. But to speak vile words merely for the satisfaction of allowing them into the space between them would be illogical. 

He did glare, though.

“We could leave the girl with him,” the monkey ANBU agreed. “She’s been slowing, too. She’s already popping soldier pills.”

Itachi hadn’t noticed, but he did not find the information surprising, given how much effort Shinko had put into that healing. It would be more surprising to learn that she wasn’t supplementing her energy to keep moving. 

“They’re a genin team,” Yuuki-sensei said, sounding vaguely annoyed this time, “we can’t just leave them here, they’re easy targets.”

“All the more reason to eliminate the weak links,” the second ANBU captain, wearing a goat-shaped mask, pointed out.

Itachi realized that he was clenching his fists, and had to divert a non-significant amount of focus into un-clenching them. He took a few steadying breaths, but they only fanned the flames of his fury at this injustice. “Is that what you normally do? Leave injured comrades behind?” He snapped.

“No,” the ANBU replied coldly, turning to look at Itachi. The eyes in his mask had been cut in a vertical shape to mimic the look of a goat’s eyes, and the effect was oddly unsettling. “If they can’t recover, we make sure the enemy can’t get anything off of them.”

Itachi felt himself bristle, even though he knew that was part of why only certain shinobi were selected as ANBU. “You kill them,” he said, not surprised, but still upset by the half-veiled threat in the man’s tone.

“We’re not suggesting we kill your little friend,” the monkey ANBU said, his dismissiveness only adding to Itachi’s distaste for him. “But you have to admit he’s holding everyone back.”

You know me, Iruka had said, after taking a critical blow meant for Itachi, always getting in the way.

Itachi could feel his objection rising, and he pressed his lips tight together to hold in the words he wished to speak, clenching his teeth to swallow back the words that begged to be released. Iruka protected the Daimyo when you were out of range, he wanted to say. We resisted a genjutsu that had dragged under Yuuki-sensei and all the Guardian Shinobi. And this is the thanks he gets? It was unbearable, unconscionable, to treat him as useless when he’d been so critical to defending their client.

“This isn’t like you, Itachi,” Yuuki-sensei said, eyeing him with a hint of concern. “You’re usually very mission-oriented.” It was true, but when Yuuki-sensei said it like that, it didn’t feel like the criticism he probably intended for it to be. 

Instead, it made Itachi recall a conversation between himself and Iruka, back when they’d first become teammates. Together with Shisui, they had been investigating a string of questionable incidents at Konoha Orphanage, and he’d allowed Iruka to attempt his usual method of arranging a meeting with the Hokage. This had resulted in an unfortunate trip to T&I and a not-insignificant amount of disapproval from his parents. The next day, Iruka had attempted to antagonize the same ANBU who had brought them in for interrogation, and Itachi had forcefully reminded him of the significant gap in ranks between fresh genin like themselves and someone like an ANBU operative. And now here he was, fantasizing about punching these smug bastards until their masks crumbled to dust. 

Iruka was truly a bad influence on him, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Iruka needs more intensive medical treatment than we are able to provide,” Itachi said, pronouncing each word carefully and precisely, thinking through every single utterance to ensure he wasn’t going to accidentally speak his mind and start treating these ANBU with the disrespect they deserved. Even though he most urgently wished to do so. The flames of his rage were consuming every part of him, his blood pounding in his head like a drum calling armies to battle. “If we don’t intervene, he will die.”

“That’s what it means to be a shinobi,” Goat said dismissively. “If he dies, he was weak.”

“If he dies,” Itachi snarled, unable to catch the words before they escaped his mouth, “it’s because we refused to intervene.”

“This isn’t your call, Uchiha, ” Monkey snapped. “And how cute of you, to accuse us of refusing to intervene when your family didn’t even intervene when a damn demon fox–”

“That’s enough,” Yuuki-sensei said, lifting a hand and stepping between Itachi and the two squad captains, cutting the ANBU off before he could finish repeating the same story that kept circulating around Konoha no matter how many times his father tried to explain the truth of the matter.  He followed these words with a sigh, heavy with the weight of a terrible responsibility. “We’re not stopping tonight,” he said, turning to Itachi with a serious look. “We need to get to the rendezvous point as soon as possible.”

Itachi’s head was still pounding, his eyes burning with tears of utter rage. “You’re killing him,” he said, feeling like he was drowning, choking on the fury he felt. “I can’t–”

“You can, and you will,” Yuuki-sensei interrupted him. “Those are your orders, soldier. Or are you breaking rank?”

Rage and helplessness tangled in Itachi’s chest. He couldn’t just leave; he’d be forfeiting his entire future to refuse orders at a time like this. 

But was Iruka’s life worth less than his shinobi career?

He didn’t know what to do, and the paralysis of the moment, the trap that had him in its jaws, felt inescapable. He couldn’t lift his head, staring furiously at the ground, feeling his rage pulsing inside him like a living being, the devastation and the helplessness and misery crushing him in its grasp.

Finally, agonizingly, he felt his resolve begin to form. Still staring at the ground, he spoke. “I’ll… I’ll take him mys–” Itachi began to say, about to cast aside everything his family expected of him for what he knew was the right decision, but before he could, a hand settled on his shoulder.

“I’ll take the kid back,” a fourth voice spoke up from behind him, sounding vaguely annoyed, though it was unclear with whom the speaker took umbrage. “His teammate’s right, the kid’s not going to make it if we wait much longer. He’s unlikely to make it to the rendezvous point, much less all the way back to Konoha after the handoff.”

“I’ll go with you,” Itachi said, turning to see who had spoken, and felt his eyes widen involuntarily as he looked up at the figure behind him. It was Hound. The same ANBU that had seemed to hate Iruka more than any other ANBU. He’d dragged Iruka to T&I, had been the one Iruka said accused him of kidnapping after he’d been locked out of the Uchiha bunker, had taken him away after Iruka infiltrated the Hyuuga compound…

He wanted to help Iruka? Why?

Yuuki-sensei cleared his throat, as if to say, that was a close one, you were seconds away from insubordination. He didn’t sound angry, necessarily. If Itachi bothered to turn around and look, instead of gaping at Hound, he had a suspicion that the look in his jonin-sensei’s eyes might be one of relief.

“Hound,” Goat said, sounding annoyed. “We can’t spare an operative of your caliber.”

“You’re almost to the rendezvous point anyway,” Hound said. “Especially if you’re not going to stop.” He waved a hand lazily in the direction of Iruka, adding, “Besides, the kid resisted a genjutsu that his own jonin-sensei couldn’t escape, and he’s a chakra sensor. He might have intel on the attacker that we need to confirm with T&I. He needs to be alive for a debrief; I’m not letting him die on our watch.”

Itachi managed to keep the surprise he felt from reaching his face. He hadn’t expected an ANBU wanting to drag Iruka into T&I to be a boon this time. He hadn’t thought of the argument himself, but as soon as Hound pointed out the importance of gathering intelligence on the incident, the argument was finished. It was clear to everyone at that point that Iruka and Itachi were the ones with the most intelligence on the incident. Both of them should be heading back to T&I as soon as possible, especially given Iruka’s injuries. Itachi had been too angry to even conjure a compelling reason to go back, and now he felt even more frustrated at how his anger had blinded him to a possible solution, especially when this ANBU had found and exploited the reason so easily.

Monkey scoffed. “He’s a genin with a bit of a knack for chakra sensing, not some child prodigy.” The tone in his voice felt especially pointed, as if he were trying to say not like this one. Itachi wasn’t sure if the ANBU was implying that Itachi himself was the prodigy, but he took offense regardless, bristling at the insinuation.

He didn’t like being compared to anyone, and he and Iruka were very different people. It would be foolish to try and compare them to one another. It made him like these ANBU even less. When he turned back around and glared at the ANBU, though, he was surprised to see the man take an involuntary step back. 

“What the hell, Uchiha?” Monkey lifted his hands. “Threatening a superior? At a time like this?”

Yuuki-sensei looked surprised, too. “Itachi?”

Hound still had a hand on Itachi’s shoulder, and his grip tightened slightly. “It’s the Curse of Hatred , not a threat, Monkey.”

Itachi felt himself stiffen involuntarily. The Curse of Hatred was something discussed among clan members of the Uchiha in private, rarely advertised. It was not like the Will of Fire, something admirable or applicable to a wider set of people. It was, however, the catalyst to awakening one’s…

…one’s…

He blinked, hard, feeling the burn in his eyes, the tears on his cheeks he hadn’t realized he’d shed. The harsh pull on his chakra he had barely noticed amidst the maelstrom of emotion. 

“Keep your eyes closed,” Hound said, so quietly he was nearly inaudible. “Just for a minute or two. They should calm down if you let them rest.”

Itachi followed his instructions, not questioning for a minute why an ANBU he didn’t recognize would know anything about how to handle a sharingan. He was too busy grappling with the idea that his rage and fear had been so strong that it had thrown open the barrier between himself and his access to the bloodline inheritance of his clan. 

No wonder he’d wanted to punch the ANBU; his fury had been deep enough to awaken his sharingan!

“I’ll take the genin back to Konoha,” Hound said again, louder, clearly addressing the group. “And the little Uchiha, too,” he added. 

Yuuki-sensei shifted his weight slightly, but made no verbal protest.

“We’ll be off, then,” Hound said, and patted Itachi’s shoulder. “Wait here for a moment,” he said. “I’ll be back with your friend.”

Itachi just nodded.

His eyes burned.

Notes:

So, I was really nervous about this chapter.
I don't know that I necessarily nailed it the way I wanted to. I realized about halfway through that Iruka POV wasn't going to be possible for this chapter, and the idea of giving an Itachi POV for this series honestly hadn't occurred to me. I don't know how I did, or if it worked.

In the canon version, I believe Itachi's sharingan is awakened by the grief of losing a comrade, but I thought that the rage and helplessness of being unable to help would be similar to the desperation that Sasuke felt when he awoke his own sharingan, and so I leaned into that sort of emotional crisis instead.

I hope it paid off, and if it didn't, let me live in my delusion a little longer, please, because i worked so hard on this chapter (>.<;)

I hope you liked it! Next chapter will hopefully wrap up the missing bits and pieces of the story that need to be covered. And we'll get to see Ibiki again! I missed that guy...

Chapter 6: Debrief

Summary:

Iruka's in the hospital... again. At least he has some company!

The next time Iruka managed to fade back into awareness, he realized he was being carried on a broad back. For a moment, he thought it was Yuuki-sensei, until he heard the tell-tale siphon-sound of chakra being drawn in by a hungry eye, the mild crackle of a lightning affinity confirming his suspicion. 

But what was his neighbor, Sharingan Kakashi, doing here?

And why was his damn Sharingan active?

No. Wait. There were two. How were there two Sharingans? Was Shisui here, too? What was going on?

He tried to open his eyes to confirm the situation, but all he could make out was the blur of trees rushing past, and a somewhat small – if familiar – figure leaping through the trees ahead of them. 

Itachi? 

But if that was Itachi, then whose Sharingan –

Iruka tried to inhale, but something caught in his chest, and his heart lurched uncomfortably. He coughed, and that hurt bad enough that he had to close his eyes, but even that didn’t stop the coughing. He couldn't seem to catch his breath, his chest heaving for air he couldn’t seem to draw in.

“Put him down!” Itachi was yelling, panicking. “He can’t breathe!”

“Calm yourself,” came a harsh reply, the voice muffled, but clearly annoyed. 

Iruka still couldn't breathe, lungs crinkling like someone was balling-up chakra paper inside his chest cavity. He felt dizzy as his neighbor swung him off his back, and he was laid on the ground. A harsh hand pressed against his stomach, and he felt whatever was blocking his lungs flutter, then loosen as the pressure forced old air from his lungs.

He coughed again, his head turned to the side, and he tasted something salty and metallic, felt flecks of it escaping his lips. Blood? Maybe. He wasn’t about to open his eyes to find out. He was ready to pass out again, really.

So, that’s exactly what he did.

---

The next time Iruka woke, he was on a gurney being wheeled through Konoha hospital. Itachi was gone, and his neighbor was, too. But at least he was going to get treated. Maybe the next time he regained consciousness, he wouldn’t hurt as much. 

---

He still hurt when he woke up, but his nurse assured him that he was no longer poisoned, and the scar that ran down his chest was pretty well healed, so he’d been out long enough for several rounds of healing. Shinko had done a good job in the early stages of his injury, so his scarring was a lot less dramatic-looking than it could have been. It was still a bit of an eyesore, though, Iruka thought, peering down his hospital gown at the red, raised skin that ran from his shoulder all the way to the opposite hip. 

He was settling back into his hospital bed, reflecting on how badly he’d fucked up on their mission – their first really serious one!! – when he heard a knock at the doorway to the hospital room.

Looking up, he spotted a familiar scarred face. “Hey, kid,” Morino Ibiki, the desk clerk of T&I greeted. “Mind if I come in?”

“Make yourself at home,” Iruka said, and pointed to the chair beside his bed, before qualifying his statement with a smirk. “If you can, with a chair that uncomfortable.”

“Eh, I’ve endured worse,” Ibiki said, lowering himself into the chair and grimacing as he added, “though not much worse.”

Iruka fought the urge to snicker. It was rare for an adult to actually go along with him when he made a bad joke, but Ibiki seemed to be in a pretty friendly mood.

…That… huh. That sounded kinda ominous, actually, once Iruka thought about it. If Ibiki was humoring Iruka, it was probably because he had a big ask.

“So, what do you want?” Iruka asked, not interested in playing the usual T&I games. 

“The hospital isn’t willing to release you to T&I for a proper debrief, and we need your intel as soon as possible. We’re attempting to identify the individual who was able to discern which group was the Daimyo’s real escort team.” Ibiki said, seemingly as pleased as Iruka to set aside pleasantries for the moment. “We’ve debriefed the Genin and ANBU who brought you in, but–”

“An ANBU brought me in?” Iruka asked, a little confused. “Weird, I thought it was my neighbor, for some reason. I must have been more out of it than I thought.” 

Ibiki gave Iruka a sharp look. “I’ll be placing some security wards,” he announced, standing from his seat rather than confirming or denying Iruka’s half-question. “You wouldn’t happen to have any modified versions, would you?”

Iruka shook his head. “Standard security seals are hard enough without any tweaking,” he said. “I usually install permanent ones, though… you have temporary ones?” he thought about how convenient that would be for overnight solo missions. Security wards for a night, pack them up in the morning, and carrying them with you to the next location? That would be so useful!

“They’re single-use,” Ibiki explained, slapping an intricate paper seal on the doorway, then one wall. His chakra made a soft shivering sound as he pushed it through the seal’s architecture with each placement. He set another seal on the opposite wall, the slapped the last one in the windowsill, flooding the last one with enough chakra that Iruka’s ears popped, almost like a pressure change had occurred briefly when the seals connected and flared to life. 

“Thats’s too bad,” Iruka said. “You’d have to make a lot more. What if you placed them on an alternate, more durable material, like a wooden stake or some stones?”

Ibiki raised a brow. “I take it you’ve not spent much time in the alternate materials section of the book I gave you,” he said.

Iruka grimaced. “Not really.”

Ibiki waved aside the comment. “We can discuss that at a later date,” he said. “I’d like to hear about the attack, from your perspective.”

Iruka noted with mild suspicion that Ibiki did not seem interested in discussing the fact that he’d been accompanied by his neighbor, Hatake Kakashi. He wasn’t sure why – had the jonin been on a different mission, and redirected to help Itachi and the apparent ANBU with them? But why would he interfere in something like that? 

He didn’t want to keep Ibiki waiting, and he wasn’t sure how long the security wards would last, so he just let it go for the moment. He wasn’t going to let it go for good, though.

“We were getting out of the worst of the terrain hazards,” Iruka said. “And the alert was sounded by one of the people in the lead – Yuuki-sensei, I think? And so I closed my eyes to listen for an unfamiliar chakra.” He felt his breath quicken at the memory. “I think that's what saved me from the ocular genjutsu – everyone was watching the guy, because he was acting weird.”

“Weird? Explain,” Ibiki insisted, his eyes fixed firmly on Iruka’s face.

“He was acting really relaxed and almost… I don't know, silly? Like he wasn’t taking the threat of a bunch of guards seriously. If he’d been a stranger, he would have known better than to cross a group of travelers that big, but he seemed…  unbothered,” Iruka explained. He hadn't thought about it at the time, not having time for it. But now that he thought back on the incident, he had to admit it had been an odd reaction. 

“Interesting,” Ibiki said, but otherwise gave no indication that he agreed with Iruka’s assessment that this was suspicious. “Was he alone?”

“I think so?” Iruka said, though it was really more question than statement. “I could hear some other chakra, but I don’t know if it was secret allies or if it was just the ANBU support team. I was mostly focusing on him.” He frowned, then. “At some point I heard an Uchiha, though, and–”

“What makes you say that?” Ibiki interrupted, frowning. 

Iruka frowned, looking at Ibiki, who was staring hard at him. “I heard a sharingan chakra,” he explained. “I couldn’t tell exactly where it was coming from, or whether it was one of our ANBU support teams or… well, I mean, it couldn’t have been anyone else.”

Ibiki nodded slowly. “I’m not at liberty to disclose the identities of your backup teams, your clearance might be higher than the average genin, but it’s not that high.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure I’ll lose that clearance after this conversation anyway,” Iruka said, trying not to feel miserable.

Ibiki tilted his head, eyeing Iruka closely for a long moment. “What makes you say that?”

“Oh come on, don’t act like you didn’t hear about the records room,” Iruka snapped, getting a little bit tired of Ibiki playing dumb.

“Trust me, everyone heard about that little stunt,” Ibiki chuckled. “But I don’t see what that has to do with your clearance.”

“I fucked it up!” Iruka said. “Old man Sarutobi said–”

“The Sandaime Hokage,” Ibiki interrupted him, shooting him a mildly amused look.

“Whatever,” Iruka waved off the correction. “Old man Hokage told me I should choose my punishment when I get back, so I figure he’ll probably punish me with that and then revoking the security clearance.”

Ibiki was squinting at Iruka like he wasn’t sure what to do with him. “I think you’ll need to bring that up with him for the particulars, but as far as T and I is concerned, nothing has crossed my desk to indicate your security is being revoked anytime soon.” He glanced out the window, as if mentally calculating how much time was left on the security wards. “Let’s get back to what we were discussing, though. You heard a sharingan. Was this before or after the attack?”

“Both,” Iruka said. “It was a ways away at first, but then after the attack it was a lot closer. Also when I was being carried back I heard two sharingans, but before the attack I only heard one. Which is kind of weird. Unless maybe I couldn’t actually hear both support teams? I don’t know.”

“I can shed a bit of light on that second sharingan,” Ibiki said, “though it might draw a bit of ire from the Uchiha. They tend to keep the awakenings of their eyes a closely guarded secret.”

Iruka frowned. “But Shisui showed me his sharingan,” he said. 

“Hm,” Ibiki said in response to that, and Iruka had no idea if it was a positive or negative reaction. The man was too good at being neutral, and his expression never seemed to give away anything that he wasn’t intentionally telegraphing to Iruka. He was almost as good as the T&I director had been after the Hyuuga incident. Except that Yamanaka Inoichi’s expressions had seemed so genuine that Iruka hadn’t been able to tell whether the man was actually surprised, neutral, or friendly, merely that they were the emotions on his face and reflected in his body langauge. Inoichi embodied whatever emotion he was trying to project, so seamlessly that it wasn’t clear at all what his true thoughts might be. On the other hand, Ibiki didn’t project his emotions, at least not for the most part, but he kept whatever his true thoughts were perfectly concealed behind his neutral expression. Any looks he spared to Iruka were only allowed to cross his features because he chose to let them appear, not because he lost control.

“So who was the second sharingan, then?” Iruka demanded, recognizing he wasn’t going to get anything more from Ibiki on this particular topic if he was ‘hm’-ing. 

“Your teammate, Uchiha Itachi, awakened his Sharingan in the aftermath of the incident,” Ibiki explained.

Iruka fought the urge to groan or roll his eyes. Of course the genius had taken the traumatic experience of being attacked by some mysterious and powerful assassin as the motivation to awaken his clan’s inherited ability. Meanwhile Iruka had just laid down and bled out. This was really just another too-obvious example of the dramatic difference between their skill levels. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was still kind of annoying. “Oh. Huh.” He considered that. “So Itachi brought me back?” He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t woken up in the middle of the evacuation and heard Itachi yelling at the ANBU (who he was still pretty sure had been his neighbor). If he hadn’t known, he would have definitely assumed that the genin who accompanied him back with the ANBU had been Shinko. “Is Shinko ok?” he asked. The only reason he could imagine she hadn’t accompanied him along with Itachi was if she’d been seriously hurt. 

“She’s still with your Jonin-sensei, but will likely need to be treated for Chakra exhaustion upon her return,” Ibiki answered. “Coming back with you would have exhausted her further.”

Oh. That sort of made sense. Itachi would have gone in her stead if he knew that she wasn’t well enough to rush back to Konoha. He was honestly a little surprised they’d bothered to bring him back at all - it wasn’t exactly protocol to leave in the middle of a mission to rush an injured teammate back to Konoha. “So I had two people bring me back, Itachi, and another sharingan-user.” It was definitely his neighbor, he’d recognized the sound. But he wasn’t sure why they were continuing the charade of calling Kakashi an ANBU. 

…unless…

Iruka knew his eyes had grown wide, because Ibiki gave him a quelling look. 

“Umino,” he said, “need I remind you that you are not cleared to know the identity of any ANBU operatives?”

Right. So one of the ANBU on the support team had been Hatake Kakashi? But why? And which ANBU had he been? And why had they sent back BOTH sharingan users with Iruka? Wouldn’t it have been better to keep at least one of the geniuses back with their actual mission team?

Ibiki’s gaze hardened as Iruka stared blankly back at him.

“Oh!” Iruka said, realising he was waiting for some sort of response. “Yes, of course I don’t have clearance for that sort of thing.” Ibiki continued to stare, not even blinking. So, clearly, Iruka hadn’t given him the answer he was looking for. Hesitantly, Iruka added, “I have no idea who that ANBU with a sharingan could have been.” Ibiki’s gaze seemed to soften a little, so Iruka kept going. “Not a single thought. Not even a theory. Definitely not. In fact, not only do I have no suspicions about it, I’m not going to think about it at all. I don’t even see the point in considering the matter further. It holds absolutely no interest for me.”

“You’re laying it on a bit thick, kiddo,” Ibiki muttered, but he didn’t address the matter further, so Iruka figured he’d managed to say whatever it was Ibiki was looking for. “Let’s circle back to the attacker. You said he was overconfident and acting strange.”

“Yeah. He seemed… really relaxed,” Iruka recalled. “He had a conversation with me and Itachi.”

Ibiki frowned. “What did he say?”

Iruka tried to remember. “Well, he said he wanted to get to the Daimyo, of course.”

Inhaling through his teeth in a hiss, Ibiki said, “Damn, so he did know who he was after.”

He hadn’t thought about that at the time, but now that he was stuck in a hospital bed with more time to reflect, Iruka realized Ibiki was right. The man could have been targeting the group because they looked wealthy – anyone who could afford a whole retinue of shinobi and armed guards was certainly rich enough to tempt a powerful thief. But they’d not carried anything to specifically mark the palanquin as the Daimyo’s. So how had the attacker known that they’d been guarding the Lord of the Land of Fire?

“Actually,” Iruka said, feeling his face heat, “Itachi and I said he was the Daimyo to each other. He might have overheard us?”

“Was that before or after he attacked?” Ibiki asked sharply.

“After,” Iruka said. “We were moving to put ourselves between him and the palanquin.”

“Was there anything else he said, besides ordering you to step away from the Daimyo?” Ibiki asked.

Iruka thought that Ibiki must have already debriefed Itachi, if he’d been the one to accompany him back to Konoha. So maybe he was just confirming details, not actually trying to learn anything for the first time. Still… “He said something about seeing the younger generation honing their skills.” Iruka frowned. “Do you think that means he knew we were genin? That he knew we were shinobi from Konoha?”

“If he’s a missing-nin then it’s entirely likely he recognized your hitai-ate,” Ibiki said. “You weren’t undercover.”

“He called Itachi a little thing ,” Iruka recalled. “After I got stabbed the first time.”

Ibiki hummed. “He said you’re the one who stopped him from suffering a similar fate.”

“The attacker wasn’t able to be struck,” Iruka said. “I don’t know if he was just really fast at substitution or something else but my attack passed through him without landing. I knew Itachi was going to make the same mistake.”

“So you knocked him aside,” Ibiki said. 

“Well, I was already injured, it made more sense to keep him in the fight,” Iruka said, even though he definitely hadn’t had time to think through his choices at the time. He’d just realized Itachi was going to be hurt, and he hadn’t wanted to see his teammate take that hit. “It didn’t do much good, though,” he added. “We were both on the ground and the attacker was coming after us. If that ANBU hadn’t blocked the second attack, neither of us would be in the hospital. We’d be carved into the memorial stone.”

Ibiki just looked at Iruka for a long moment, a solemn expression on his face. “And after the ANBU arrived?” 

“He just… disappeared,” Iruka waved a hand vaguely, not sure what sort of gesture indicated someone vanishing without a trace. “He didn’t want to fight all the ANBU, I guess.”

“A wise decision,” Ibiki murmured. “Strange that he didn’t catch them in the same genjutsu.”

Iruka hadn’t even thought about that. “I didn’t fall into it after being attacked, so maybe he wasn’t actively trying to trap people anymore.” He frowned. “I don’t know why he stopped, though. It is kind of weird.”

“There’s a lot about the attack that doesn’t make sense,” Ibiki agreed. “It’s disturbing to have confirmation that he already knew your team was accompanying the real Daimyo – none of the other teams reported anything out of the ordinary, so it seems he targeted your team specifically.”

Iruka grimaced. “Does that mean there’s an information leak?”

“Potentially,” Ibiki said. “Though at the moment it isn’t clear whether the leak is on our end or the Daimyo’s.”

Iruka would put his money on the Daimyo’s team, if for no other reason than it seemed easier to get information from the Daimyo’s fortress than to try and sneak into a shinobi’s hidden village.

…then again, Iruka had stolen the information, and he was just a genin who was probably about to have his security clearance revoked. So maybe it would be better not to make any assumptions.

Suddenly, he felt very grateful that they’d sent Ibiki to grill him – he didn’t think most people in T&I would be so understanding, especially given that he’d recently broken into the records room, and then the very next mission they had was disrupted by an attacker who knew the exact details of their mission.

Hell, T&I could have pursued him as a traitor instead of having Ibiki sit down and chat with him. 

He must have gone pale at the thought, because Ibiki was watching him.

Chuckling in a low voice, Ibiki said, “Not for nothing, but it’s very unlikely that the records you stole were the ones the attacker used to plan his attack.” 

Iruka frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“He would have known more details, like the fact that there were ANBU backup squads,” Ibiki explained. “That detail was arranged by Konoha, but was not shared with the Daimyo’s team.”

Oh. Well that was something of a relief. “But maybe he knew that, so he pretended not to know about the ANBU,” Iruka argued.

“Trust me, we are exploring all possibilities,” Ibiki said. “The mask and the minimal combat makes him very difficult to identify. We have heard some rumors of a similarly-attired individual with a lackadaisical attitude cropping up more often lately, so it seems likely the stories are connected. We don’t have much information regarding his allegiances at the moment, though.”

Iruka considered that. “Did you get a name from any of those rumors?”

“Not yet,” Ibiki said, frowning. “Hopefully soon.”

Iruka wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not, but accepted that he probably didn’t have the clearance to know. And even if he did, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t before long. “Okay.”

Ibiki stood then. “If you think of anything else, come find me,” he said. “You know where I work. If I’m not there, I’m sure Yamanaka-san will be willing to hear you out.”

Iruka nodded. “Thanks.”

“Oh,” Ibiki said, digging into a pocket and pulling out a paper. “Here’s one of those temporary security barriers. Take a look at it while you’re resting, if you want.” He handed it to Iruka. It was clearly one of the same seals he’d used to secure the room. 

Iruka looked down at it, and felt his ears pop again. He realized Ibiki had unsealed the room. He wasn’t sure how, exactly, as he’d taken his eyes off the man. Scowling, he accused, “You did that on purpose!”

Ibiki just smirked at Iruka, but didn’t deny it. “I wish you a speedy recovery,” he said, letting himself out of the room. 

Iruka watched him go, and sighed. He had a lot to think about…

Notes:

shhhh the chapter count has always been 7 idk what youre talking about...

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 11 of Sharingan Stealer