Unwavering Sky Chapter 1

Of Lost Lambs and Frying Pans

Disclaimer : Don't own anything. No, seriously. XD

Woots, 23 hours to assignment deadline, not a single word even written down yet, and here I am screwing around with a new story. I am so going to fail this semester. Which will cause me to quit fan fiction entirely cos I'd have to find work without graduating.

My gawd. D:

Soundtrack List

Ayumi Hamasaki - Missunderstood

****Unwavering Sky****

A man with spiky silver hair dressed in a shabby suit, a medical eye patch covering one eye, and a face mask jerked out of his bored stupor as the plane landed with a jolt.

A chubby man who was sweating bullets next to him laughed shakily and patted the silver haired man's shoulders a little too enthusiastically, "Ahaha, are you ok boy? Don't let it get to you, ahh... I remember when I was young like you..."

Suppressing a long suffering sigh so that he didn't at least appear overtly rude, he slowly rubbed his one visible eye and responded with noncommittal nods and grunts to the unending flow of words. A skill that he had apparently perfected over the last 13, sleep deprived hours filled with painful boredom and the grating sound of the chubby man's high pitched voice drilling into his ears.

He'd like to say he handled the situation with composure and pose befitting someone of his age; but high tailing it out of the plane the moment the seat belt sign turned off probably didn't count.

Breathing out a powerful sigh of relief, he stretched, hearing the bones in his spine pop with satisfaction. One sleepy looking eye turned upwards towards the heavens, "Same as usual huh..." heaving another gusty sigh, he picked up his luggage and started moving towards the ridiculously long line that seemed to begin from the immigration counter even as a multitude of people rushed past him.

Holding his thumb and pointer finger together, the man pinched the bridge of his nose to rest his tired eyes, or eye as the case may be.

The silver haired man stood in line for hours, silently watching the line dwindle at an outrageously slow pace with disaffected indifference. It was a strange feeling, but not one he was a stranger to; the commotion of the airport droning all around him, the hustle, swearing voices, happy faces or sad faces. He always felt dissonantly separated from them; walking as part of the crowd, and yet isolated from them.

"Uhm... Sir? I'm sorry but it's your turn now." An expectant voice from the man behind the counter broke his day dreaming.

Startled out of his reverie, the silver haired man ran one hand through his spiky hair with an apologetic eye smile, "Yo. Gomen, gomen. He handed the bland looking man in a grey suit with a fake looking, accommodating smile, his passport and some ID. As the man received the documents with an clearly fake smile, the one eyed man lazily glanced at the dark grey clouds hanging outside the line of thick glass.

Even the sun looked grey.

His one visible turned back to the man at the counter and he patiently waited for the all green, his only concern at the moment was finding a place to stay for the night and leaving the tiresome hustle and bustle behind for a nice cold cup of sake.

His mundane thoughts were chased away as the young official looked up with a twitch, "Your name sir?"

"Hatake Kakashi."

The accommodating smile stretched even further, as if the airport official was bracing himself for some sort of unpleasantness, "Everything looks in order sir; we just need you to step aside for a moment."

One eye sleepily blinked, "Un? Is there something wrong?"

"No, no, it's just a part of our new policies; we now require all incoming passengers to be screened. Health problems you see." The brown haired man scratched the back of his head apologetically as he patted some sort of contraption that the silver haired man had never seen before, "That's why the queue is so long today."

"Maa. It's alright. Let's just get this done with shall we?" He leaned in with a conspiratorial smile behind the face mask, "I'm sure you want to get out of here as fast as I do."

The airport official graced with a wry, but real smile this time, "Don't I know it." Coughing slightly, he reassumed the slightly pretentious tone that almost all officials were required to learn upon graduation from Politician School, "Please put your thumb on that small screen, breath onto that clear receptor and look into this scope for a moment."

"Ah..." The spiky haired man slowly did as requested, "This looks interesting." Kakashi drawled with his one eye stuck to the scope.

"It's a machine that was just rolled out recently and patented by MBI. Since MBI has significant investments in New Tokyo Airport, they are including this as part of our safety policies. It's still in the trial stage though," the official replied distractedly as he began typing in instructions behind the counter, "It's supposed to scan your retina, DNA and thumbprints, then cross reference it against a database of known criminals, not that we're implying you are one sir. At the same time, it takes your temperature and vitals to check for any diseases of any sort. Pretty nifty huh, the things MBI come up with nowadays."

No wonder he looked so harassed, he probably had more than one passenger go off on him before this, especially considering the privacy issue and all round hassle. Luckily he was as laid back as they came.

"Mmm... How long am I supposed to stay like this by the way?"

"Ah, it's ok now. You can step back; we just need to wait for the results."

Nodding, the silver haired man stood back in a bored pose with one hand in his pocket, cursing himself for not at least having the wisdom to bring any reading material. Offhandedly, he noticed the official's smile get stiffer and stiffer as every second passed. He internally concluded that the machine wasn't supposed to take this long to give a result.

Naturally, considering how crappy the entire day had been so far, Kakashi cursed himself for even hoping that he would be able to get some sleep before the day ended.

As if it some malignant divine being could see his thoughts, the machine began to emit a series of shrill chirping noises.

The grey haired man chuckled humourlessly, "I'm guessing it was supposed to start singing instead of beeping?"

The man behind the desk glanced at the scarecrow with one hand in his pocket, then at his passport, then the machine's display. He looked at it closely, and then sighed the sigh of a man who had been forced to put up with far too many shrill chirping noises.

"Something like that." The official replied with a wry grimace, "Could you please come with us? I'm sure it's just the machine malfunctioning... again, if I might add, but its policy."

The man bowed again, and when a security agent stepped up he too bowed. The security personnel looked almost as hassled as the clerk did. As the two men, dressed in gray led the masked man to the door that he had seen so many other passengers go through over the last half hour or so, he could make out the faces of the family that had been standing behind him. A young man and what Kakashi assumed was his wife and child looked very grateful that the shabbily dressed man had had the decency to at least be quick instead of making a fuss like many of the previous passengers.

Sighing once more, the man in the threadbare suit followed the two uniformed men down a grey corridor, with an absolutely bored look on his face, resigning himself to at least another hour of waiting.

Several hours, 3 cups of lukewarm beverages and a small meal of curry rice later, Kakashi revised his earlier opinion. It wasn't a bad day.

It was REALLY bad day.

He wondered why it was taking so long as he looked around the small room, with a wall of reflective glass taking up the entirety of one wall, he ran his hand for the umpteenth time through his hair, paying no attention to the small gray television in a corner spewing random advertisements and upbeat sounding tunes and wondering if someone upstairs hated him at the moment.

Behind the glass wall however, a quiet but intense discussion was being held.

"Status." A silver haired woman curtly demanded from the harassed looking security guard.

"He's a tough nut to crack. We kept in there as you asked, but he hasn't moved from his spot other than to get a few drinks. He doesn't even look worried at all, in fact, he hasn't even changed his facial expression. He just keeps watching the wall with this vacant look on his face. Are you sure there's something wrong?"

Slapping the clipboard in her hand, the grey haired woman stormed into the room, disregarding the security guard's protests.

As she did so, she noted that the man's expression finally showed a hint of annoyance for the first time in hours as she banged the table with her clipboard in a belligerent manner,"Who are you?"

He slowly blinked at the blood stained woman who had just burst into the room, looking like a storm cloud and had the gall to demand something from him in an entirely too offensive tone, "Not grumpy enough to forget my manners?" The man in the chair replied snidely.

"I have no time for games," The woman hissed angrily, "Now, who are you?"

"I'm fairly sure that my name is already written on that clipboard you are currently using as a percussion instrument, but let me humor you," he replied in an exasperated manner, as if answering a particularly stupid child, "My name is Kakashi Hatake and my ass is sore."

She was Asian, that much he could tell. Tall, slender, and her hair was a pale grey white, with tired wrinkles under a stormy grey eye that was currently burning with accusation in them while her other eye was obscured by gauze wrapped around her head.

The flimsy plastic ID that was clipped to her lab coat identified the woman as one Sahashi Takami. That would have been weird but not entirely impossible, had it not been for the fact that her wardrobe was splattered by liberal amounts of fresh blood that stung the man's nose.

Behind her, an equally tired looking security guard, the one that had escorted him here, entered with a serious look on his face.

"I am not in the mood for games right now. Your documents are all legitimate, but no matter what we did, your retinal scans and DNA could not be scanned and filed, not to mention your thumbprints belong to a man who supposedly died 50 years ago." She slammed a clipboard on the table punctuating each word with a loud bang, "Who. Are. You?! Which company paid you to do this stupid stunt and how did they manage to stop us from scanning your DNA and retina?"

That was when the spiky haired man realized he may have had made a mistake by being so nonchalant and carefree, years of absolutely nothing to do or beware off tended to do that to a person he noticed, however he kept his composure easily and replied in a nonplussed tone, "Excuse me? I told you, I am Kakashi Hatake. I do not know what the problem is, but whatever it is, it's obviously on your side since my documents are obviously legit. You cannot blame me if your equipment is faulty."

He slowly stood up to tower over the woman, deciding to discard the genial facade entirely in an effort to make intimidate his accuser into letting him go before things could get any worse, "Now are you going to apologize? And how are you going to compensate me the three hours I have wasted in this stupid room?"

He fully expected the woman to back down since he knew he had done nothing wrong. Except lose track of which face to use but that was beside the point.

Naturally, his expectations greatly fell short as the woman pressed a button of some sort under her sleeve, "If you think you can get away by intimidating me, I hope you understand how much trouble you are in at the moment."

His single visible eye narrowed as the two one eyed individuals glared at each other, "Is that a threat? You can't keep me here and you know it."

The moment the door opened, the man couldn't help but face palm as he realized his day was about to get far worse as he smelt something he was, regrettably, intimately familiar with.

The overwhelming stench of death seemed to trail behind a gray haired woman with one hand casually placed on the hilt of a sheathed nodachi at her waist. Her skin tight gray uniform certainly did her lean, athletic curves justice and the tight skirt showed off her long legs like nothing else. Kakashi woukld have been quite taken by her beauty had it not been for her pinched and haggard expression along with her predator like stance.

Unfortunately, he had no chance to admire those legs as the moment the woman's eyes landed on him, her pupils dilated instantly and she smiled ferally. Kakashi's one eye widened incredulously as the unprovoked woman suddenly rushed forward with a challenging scream, drawing the blade with a smooth and sharp move. Her sudden dash caught the gray haired man off guard, not because of her sudden actions, but because of her speed; speed that he hadn't seen in centuries. The sharp steel glinted dangerously in the air as the woman swung it in an attempt to bisect him as he backpedalled, avoiding the blade that swished dangerously close to his chest. Unsatisfied, the woman in the black uniform flowed into a crouch and pushed off, thrusting the blade at him like a spear being shot from a canon.

"Karasuba! NO!"

Judging by the split second look he managed to get of Takami's chagrined visage as he narrowly avoided being bisected in half, she obviously hadn't expected the other woman to go berserk at all. The blade halted for a split second, hanging in the tense air between all four of them as the order apparently tried and failed to tunnel its way through into the berserk woman's consciousness before continuing its attempt to slide between his ribs.

Without any time to reconsider, he felt his long unused survival instincts jump start. He felt his body twist, narrowly avoiding the sharp thrust before swiftly flowing from a spin into a low kick that swept his attacker's legs out from under her with one low kick before palming her shocked face while her body hung limply in mid air and driving her skull straight through the nearest wall.

[BOOM!]

Takami watched wide eyed as the man somehow moved faster than she could see. From her perspective, one moment the lazy, shabbily dressed looking man who had just backed into a corner, looking annoyed, rather than fearful, suddenly disappeared before a loud crash echoed in the room, along with a flood of dust, shattered cement and plaster that obscured everything and pushed her back a few steps. Shielding her face, she tried to peer through the dust, and started wondering if she had fallen asleep in the lab or something.

The shabbily dressed man was patting away the dust, plaster and cement from his suit, seemingly uninjured save a small blade cut on his masked cheek and THE Karasuba, the Black Sekirei, had the entire upper half of her body shoved through a wall, with only her butt and kicking legs showing and judging by the muffled, rather colorful language coming from the wall, decidedly unhappy.

"Oops. My bad... Overreacted. Just a little."

"Be-Benitsubasa! Haihane!"

Grimacing, the gray haired man faded away like a ghost, only to reappear behind a dazed Takami and chop her neck but the damage was already done, and he could feel two more... whatever they were, smelling like they regularly bathed in blood, approaching his location with extreme speed. Catching her body as she slumped forward, he lowered her down carefully before turning back towards the security guard, only to find him already passed out with a puddle between his legs.

The two remaining members of the Disciplinary Squad arrived in time to see one black eye watching them as it slowly faded away and a disembodied voice cursing. Then reality kicked back in and they gaped at the scene of carnage before them.

The sound of someone cursing her mouth off alerted them to the fact that their leader was still conscious and was apparently trying to break her way out of the... wall?

"Wha-what happened here?"

"What is that smell?"

****Unwavering Sky****

One solitary black eye roved the empty streets from a desolate alley outside the airport before quietly retreating into the darkness where one black iris turned into two blue ones as their owner slumped down against a dirty, moldy wall and began to take stock of his situation.

"Damn, damn, damn. This day can't get any worse. No clothes, no supplies, no money, no ID, and being hunted by some sort of weird... things." He scratched his blonde no-longer-gray hair furiously, "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why, oh, WHY did I get so careless?!"

Not getting any answers like he expected, the blonde stopped berating himself and wearily stood up, his mind was already considering the backup plans he had made just in case he was ever held hostage by a high strung scientist and her alluring bodyguard.

Just then, lightning cracked violently in the skies above him, and he blankly stared at the gray stormy skies. Another crack reverberated through the entire city, and as if it had been a signal, the heavens themselves opened and it began to rain, drenching the blue eyed blonde almost instantly.

"You have GOT to be kidding me." Giving one last sigh, he shrugged off his suit and chucked it over his shoulder, "Guess I don't have a choice." He grumbled and began heading north, ignoring the rain that battered his body and head, taking care to avoid any major streets or cameras, as the rain muted any sound or smell.

Before long, the alley came to an end, and the blonde carefully leapt across the drains, heading north towards where he remembered his old house was.

Shaking the water out of his lashes, Naruto carefully crept through the bustling streets until he came to a park. Thanking God for the meagre camouflage and shelter, he immediately leapt into the thick brush and made his way through the upper layers of leafy trees.

Everything was a wet, blurry grey to the blonde as he carefully leapt from tree to tree, cutting a windy path through the path, careful to avoid even the smallest hint of life, because he was quite simply too tired to even bother anymore.

Naturally, the moment, he jumped down from a tree that signalled the end of the trees lining the centre of a park, he found himself right in the middle of another confrontation. Standing in front of him in the rain were three people, all shadowed by the glare of a large limousine, obscuring much of what Naruto could see of them.

Shielding his eyes from the car's headlights, he carefully looked at the three people who were staring at him in the middle of a park; he internally wondered if whoever was supposed to be watching over him upstairs was currently taking an extended toilet break.

"Who is that?" a short boy, dressed in an impeccable white suit seemed to ask his taller companion, a neatly dressed man that smelt like earth drenched in blood, a katana already drawn in one hand and an umbrella in the other, professionally edging over to shield his smaller charge with his body. The third member of their triage watched the proceedings discompassionately despite being dressed in nothing but a rain soaked, blood splattered and overly large t-shirt that did absolutely nothing whatsoever to hide her generous assets. Not that it was going to help much anyway, considering the rather... transparent state it was in.

The man's pupils dilated, causing Naruto to tense, but it seemed like something was finally going right for him when the tall man forcibly calmed down despite the white knuckled grip he had on his blade, "We need to go, Hayate. Now." He bit out warily. The wooden hilt in his hand cracked a little under the pressure as he threw the umbrella away.

"What? But we haven't gotten the Scrapped Number!" the young boy whined.

His servant seemed to hesitate for a moment before grabbing the young boy around his waist and lunging for the stoic girl, only to find the strange blonde man standing between them and the Scrapped Number. Mutsu immediately leapt backwards in a panic as the urge to rend flesh surged by the blonde's proximity.

"What are you trying to do to her!?" the stranger demanded as he took note of the special phrase that the boy referred to the girl behind him with.

"We have no quarrel with you. We just want to give her a safe place to stay." Mutsu growled out.

The blue eyed blonde snorted derisively, "Yeah right. She looks half dead, covered in blood, and you happen to be carrying a blade. Oh yeah, I'm totally going to let you take her."

Suppressing a curse, Mutsu decided that it wasn't worth it and immediately leapt backwards towards the car with Hayate in his arms. Glaring at the retreating car until he was sure that they wouldn't return, the blonde turned around and knelt to check if the woman was wounded. Ignoring the fact that she had a male looking all over her near naked body, she kept her eyes on him in a vacant stare, "Are you alright? Do you need to get that looked at or something?"

"... Yes." She briefly glanced at the shirt, "This blood... is not mine."

The way she spoke was dead, lacking any real intonation whatsoever. Strangely enough, it reminded him of the way his little brother used to speak.

Like someone who had lost all hope in the world and no longer saw anything worth living for, and it tore at his emotions to just leave her here.

Naruto pushed his hair out of eyes in frustration as he wondered what to do. Just then, a whiff of dry, cold ice tainted by the iron tang of blood entered his nose, and he narrowed his eyes at the drenched woman who was still watching him inscrutably, "You... you're not human are you? What are you people? Why are so many of you all over the place?" he demanded from her as his frustration peaked. He had never encountered this sort of problems in all the years that he had lived and he was quite frankly tired of it all.

Play Ayumi Hamasaki - Missunderstood

Her grey orbs seemed to get even bigger as she replied in a soft monotone, "... We... are Sekirei. What are you?"

A small smile touched his lips at her reaction, at least now he knew that not all of them responded to his presence like blood crazy mad men.

"Ask me again when I have a proper answer, for now you can just call me Naruto." Standing up wearily, he draped his wet blazer around her shoulders, "It's not the best, but it's a damn sight better than that tattered piece of cloth you have." Flicking back his hair once more, he looked around the park to see if there was any shelter for either of them, torn between leaving for his planned shelter and bringing her with him or just leaving her.

Hmm... bring a blood soaked stranger that might be an insane psycho with me, or leave her here where more crazy things that smell like blood might come for her or even worse, she might go crazy on normal civilians.

It was a no brainer.

Grasping her thin arm gently so that he didn't startle the expressionless girl, he helped her up, "Come on. You're coming with me, got to get you out of the rain."

If possible, her eyes widened even further and she grabbed his sleeve, stopping both of them from moving, as she spoke haltingly, "You... want me?"

Naruto blinked in a nonplussed manner, not seeing the important she seemed to place in her question, "I... want to get you out of the rain if that's what you're asking."

Retroactively, as he watched her face suddenly light up with a broad smile, years later, he realized that watching the plain, vacant yet busty girl smile was like watching the sun dawning after a stormy, rainy night.

Somehow fitting, considering the night that they met.

"I assume you can keep up with me?"

She gave him blank look, empty of any signs of understanding. Just when the blonde was about to try again, the pale woman placed her slender feet on the wet ground and stood up with a wobble. Unsteadily, she took a few steps forward before giving the blonde the smallest of nods.

Chuckling slightly, he slicked his hair back and answered her in kind by leaping up into the trees agilely without another word. The sounds of bark and branches cracking slightly behind him, told him that he was right in assuming that the woman was apparently physically far more capable than any human he had met in the past one hundred years.

And judging by the other four he had met so far, he concluded that all of them, or at least most of them, were probably equally as strong or fast.

As they cleared yet another block of buildings and the fourth park, he motioned for the girl behind him to slow down as they reached a residential area, "We're nearly there. I have a place somewhere around here to rest. He probably won't mind if you come along."

The grey haired woman seemed to stumble, prompting Naruto to duck under her and slung one of her arms onto his shoulder to support her. If anything, this just seemed to make the hesitant woman look even more troubled, if the hitch in her soft monotone was any indication, "Ah... Sorry." Downtrodden anger began emanating in waves from the taciturn woman as her stomach growled loudly as she leaned into him weakly, "So... Sorry..."

Naruto blinked at the strange way the woman kept desperately apologizing and carefully replied as he lifted her as gently as he could, "Uh... Don't worry about it. It's technically mine anyway. I just lent it to him."

"Ah... Understood." Despite herself, she couldn't help but lay her cheek on his chest.

'Of course, I didn't expect to have to meet him again before at least another 80 years have passed.' he internally thought with a grimace as a classic Japanese style, two storeys high mansion came into view when they turned the last corner. Lights shining from the windows told him that at least someone was home.

The edge of Naruto's lips turned up slightly as he watched the mansion with something resembling nostalgia, standing tall and majestic amongst its more modern neighbours, "Izumo Inn. It's been a while."

The two of them slunk through the heavy rain, careful not to let anyone else see them as blonde stronde along the path as fast as he could with a trembling female in his arms, until he reached the door. Gently touching the deep knotted wood of the door with a trace of nostalgia on his lips, he knocked on it as well as he could with the woman in his arms, "Takehito, you there?" he called out loudly.

He faintly heard the sound of footsteps squeaking on the polished wooden floors and waited expectantly for the young man to open the door with a small smile.

When the door started to open, he waved one hand with a cheery smile, "Yo, Take...hito?"

He blinked.

He did not know why. Maybe it was because of boredom, or because he just didn't have anything to look forward to, or because he just stopped caring, but one day, a long time ago, he had stopped seeing the world in colours.

Everything had become drab, grey and monochrome.

The sunset sky that he had loved watching every day regardless of time or urgency had become grey and dead.

There was no difference anyway, he had thought to himself. He only had his job, the burden he had decided to carry and nothing else. For years, he had wondered the planet, from one tragedy to another then sleeping for years on an end when it wasn't his turn.

The person standing in the door way, watching him with large purple eyes was decidedly not the small, inquisitive boy from his memories. Unless he had somehow mistaken Takehito's gender, and he had gotten his hair dyed, which was rather doubtful.

Instead she stood there; long deep purple hair blowing in the strong wind, a splash of incredibly brilliant purple and white on a grey, rainy canvas and the soaked, ragged blonde found himself rather dumbfounded and a little slackjawed.

Then her pupils dilated and she swung the frying pan in her hands and everything went blissfully black as Naruto toppled backwards under the pale haired woman's weight.

****Unwavering Sky****

Messing around with a new story; I know that this story starts out pretty cliché, in fact I don't think I can remember any significant Sekirei/Naruto fics that DON'T start out this way in one way or another. Ya know, immortal and all that jazz. Fortunately, I also don't like to do things that are already overused, so do look forward to something that is different from Naruto taking over Minato's spot.

That being said, Unwavering Sky, End Game, Fata Morgana and Blessed Curse are all more or less side projects, so don't expect regular updates either.

Back to assignments. *Sobs in a corner*