Light My Way

Chapter 5

You knew I had the cure, you knew you went astray.

1

Kakashi was well adjusted by the time Mikoto was back from her scouting mission. He seemed to be comfortable enough to be reading his copy of Icha Icha again. And any sort of disorientation he had received from not eating for several days seemed to have disappeared.

"You know, Minato might have been right about your need to eat," Mikoto said, lightly biting.

Kakashi shrugged as he stuffed another handful of pork rinds under his mask.

"These are delicious," he said, pointing to a veritable mountain of pork rinds on a tray. "Stole 'em with an invisibility jutsu."

"Kakashi!" Mikoto said, lightly chastising. "These people are poor enough as is."

"Bet Naruto's stealing from them," he said, somewhat unrepentant.

They were staying at the top floor of an apartment that they had entered through a broken window. This was one of the five most likely choices of places to stay, based on the areas they had scouted. They had been here for nearly twenty hours, but Kakashi had figured that spending two days at each location would probably guarantee them the ability to ferret the cute little genin out.

"I hear voices," they both said at the same time.

"We should run down there," Kakashi said, pushing the plate of pork rinds away from himself.

Mikoto shook her head. "We should make a lot of noise. If someone comes to look for us, it'll be easier to hide their bodies up here than down there."

Kakashi couldn't argue with that logic. After all, his own assassinations were usually performed with explosions, lightning and lots of extremely fast running. No one ever saw him, even if they suspected him and raised his bounty for it.

He grimaced. He did have a perfect record for assassinations, though. But this was a retrieval mission, first.

"Onee-san!" Mikoto squealed on the top of her lungs.

The shuffling noise downstairs decreased in volume.

The footsteps headed upwards, cautiously. Almost like ninja.

Mikoto opened the door and Kakashi lay down with his back against the door, feigning sleep. His copy of Icha Icha and his mask had been slipped under the couch he was on. He gave an expert kick to his plate of pork rinds and they sailed through the air, sliding from one edge of the kitchen countertop to the side of the stove. Not a single pork rind was spilled.

"That's a skill," Mikoto whispered, probably finding it funny. Kakashi smirked against the back of the couch. He hadn't even had to practice that one.

When a pink haired girl matching the description for Haruno Sakura leapt through the door and landed next to Kakashi with a knife, flanked by Uzumaki Naruto, a palpable surge of relief went through Mikoto.

She fell forward in her chair and it rose up to meet the chin of the boy sneaking up on her.

"Now, now, Sasuke-kun. It's not polite to draw a knife on your mommy," she said, turning around.

Kakashi neutralized Sakura and Naruto with quick taps to their wrists, causing them to drop their own knives.

Sasuke had landed on his rump and was now staring up at her.

His eyes traced over her features, deciding that this girl was definitely from his family.

"You are not my mother. Konoha is two months early," he said. His face darkened. "If you're really from Konoha."

Naruto took this opportunity to throw his hand against Kakashi's throat, but the man checked his palm with a wagging chin and sent Naruto sprawling as well, somehow.

Sakura jumped back, pulling out a thin knife that was remarkably well concealed.

"Uchiha Sasuke. Stand down. I am Elite Jonin Hatake Kakashi. That is Elite Jonin Uchiha Mikoto under the effects of an age repression seal."

The military-styled speech was clearly comfortable to the younger boy, who relaxed a little bit after the information about the seal.

Naruto groaned. "We can't stop them anyway. I told you we should have ran. Besides, if they weren't friendlies, we would be missing arms and legs now."

Only Sakura didn't seem convinced. "When and where was out rendezvous point supposed to be. Who is our jonin sensei?"

Mikoto smiled at her. "My foolish little son blew up a hotel, then left you in our capital city to wait four months to date and rendezvous within a two block radius of the hotel, in one of the three alleyways. The test would be a Konoha battle chant in sign."

Her hands twisted through a series of words. Hold out your hands and call the fire, reach for the beyond to protect what's there. Tonight's dancing leaves come out to bear, on the name of my forefathers I do so swear.

"How do I know you didn't just pick that up somewhere?" Sakura said. Sakura decided to sign back, with more exotic words. Konoha was founded by Senju, two, with control over earth green and water blue. Sitting between two doors, entering society with bliss-bringing hands. Uchiha, Hyuuga, Aburame rang true, growing clans from wandering bands.

Mikoto's smile widened. This girl knew how to play the old game of handsign history. The Sandaime was a man of world renown, God of Shinobi all around. Libraries and libraries read and burnt, three thousand techniques to master, three thousand learnt.

"Hey, I taught you that," Naruto complained. He was having a good time watching and interpreting the handsigns though, and was totally into the idea of playing this game for hours and hours. His own hands responded quick. The Yondaime had hair and heart burning gold, to neither demons of Earth nor Fox-Fire would he fold. Spiraling spheres, yellow flashes and bosses of Toads, for the longest would his history be told.

Mikoto stared at his hands carefully. That was not the usual history of the Yondaime which they signed going into battle. But then again, Naruto had the right to tell any story he wanted.

By now, Kakashi had caught on. "Maa," he muttered, his verbal tick showing, "this is a fantastic way for Konoha shinobi to verify their identity." He signed in response. The Fourth was a teacher most dear, who taught his students without a hint of fear. He had a love for shinobi and civilians both and gave his life to honor his oath.

"You're one of the Yondaime's students?" Naruto said, with no volume control. Sakura and Sasuke immediately shushed him.

"Okay, okay," Sasuke grunted. "We get it, we all get it. Let's go home now."

Naruto pouted. He was just getting started.

Soon enough, Kakashi and Mikoto had organized their plan of action. They were to escape Yeddo by the dark of the night and it was barely evening at the moment. Naruto and Sasuke had been supervised by Kakashi in cleaning out the apartment the trio of Team Seven had lived in for two months.

Kakashi stared at a couch with a target and far too many holes morbidly. "I pity the armchair," he said.

Sasuke scowled. "Do you always like to pretend you're not a ninja or something?"

Kakashi smiled at him, his eyes crinkling. "It's fun to pretend that you aren't soaked in the blood of your enemies!"

"Gross," Naruto muttered under his breath.

"What was that? I seem to have developed a bit of hearing loss in my advanced age," Kakashi called over to the blond boy, who was cleaning out and selectively eating stuff in the fridge.

"Save me a pear," Sakura shouted.

"Already done," Sasuke shouted back to the girl in the other room.

Kakashi grinned at the level of comfort the team showed with one another. They even knew what type of food to save each other! It warmed his heart.

Naruto started to throw tomatoes at Sasuke, who was catching them the best he could without damaging them.

"I like these," Sasuke said, indignant. "I'm going to put smushed tomato in all of your ramen."

"That's not very nice, Sasuke-kun. Don't do things like that to your friends," said a very familiar voice.

Sasuke swallowed. It really had been his mother under an age seal of some sort.

Naruto's face lit up in a smile. "Pretty Uchiha lady!" he shouted.

"Naruto," Sasuke warned. "That's my mother."

Naruto giggled and scratched the back of his head in a way that Kakashi thought was very similar to his own.

They sat around for an almost-family dinner of ramen and pork rinds as the rays of sunlight finally disappeared, where Naruto proved he could eat as much as everyone else at the table combined. Sasuke ate a tomato for every bowl of ramen that Naruto consumed and Kakashi continued to shovel pork rinds under his mask while reading.

"Boys," Sakura said, scowling as the three stared down one another. Mikoto smiled at her. They were both slowly eating their first bowls of ramen and their first tomatoes.

2

"There are Iwa missing nin tailing us," Kakashi signed discretely.

"How do you think they figured it out?" Mikoto signed back.

"One of our genin must have been seen. Two of them have rather unmistakable hair, after all. Or it might even have been either of us," Kakashi signed.

Mikoto rolled her eyes.

"You're right. I don't make mistakes," Kakashi signed.

Mikoto smiled at him. "Are we blooding them?"

"Maybe a bit too young?" Kakashi looked uncertain.

"Your age. My age."

Kakashi understood.

"Naruto," Kakashi whispered. "The three of you should kill the missing nin tailing us. They're around two leagues behind us, but they're catching up fast. We'll bail you out if you fail."

"No worries, Hatake-san," Sakura, of all people, said. "We'll get it done. Naruto's done his share this mission."

Kakashi nodded and they all stopped in a clearing.

Sasuke began to hum and set up traps with the veritable bundle of knives that he had carried back.

"Can you be a distraction, Naruto?" Sakura asked seriously.

Naruto nodded mutely, clearly uncomfortable.

"Hey, Naruto," Sasuke said quietly. "If you don't want to do it, me and Sakura can-"

Naruto shook his head frantically. "I can do it. Tsuchi Bunshin no Jutsu," he mouthed. His clones furthered transformed into copies of everyone in the team.

They looked to be setting up camp.

"Won't work," Mikoto said. "One of them is definitely a sensor type."

Naruto scowled. "I can give them more or less chakra," he countered.

"Your funeral," Sakura said cheerfully. Mikoto did look rather impressed when he reformed his clones, though.

"Better than your funeral," Naruto said darkly.

"No it's not."

Sasuke chose not to comment, though Kakashi decided that the boy looked a combination of exasperated and worried. No team could have no conflict whatsoever, the man guessed.

They were perched in trees, concealing their chakra when one of the Iwa missing nin, who could have been no older than fifteen years old rushed into the clearing, screaming.

"You killed my father, Hatake Kakashi!"

The actual Hatake Kakashi was actually in the process of break the missing nin's jonin sensei's jaw with one hand as Mikoto was handing him a kitchen knife to bury into the back of the man's head.

The clone captured his mannerisms rather well, parrying the boy's drawn kunai with the small kitchen knife he held - straight into the fire.

For the record, the boy managed to keep himself from getting burned by flipping rather quickly, using his own momentum to influence the directional trajectory.

He rolled over a trip wire and a large amount of knives rained on him from the treetops as the clones jumped into the shadows.

"Ryuichi!" someone shouted. "Doton: Doryuheki!"

A wall of earth rose up to meet the knives, catching most of them. One of them managed to bury itself into Ryuichi's stomach. Kakashi raised an eyebrow over the cover of his book. It must have been painful.

"No!" the girl who had summoned the earth wall shouted.

"Get him to safety, I'll kill all of them," another voice promised, as they cautiously ran into the clearing, managing to keep away from the various traps.

"No," the girl said. "Fuck this job. That's Hatake Kakashi. Ryuichi's going to die without medical treatment. Our lives over a bit of money. We're not strong enough to fight the good fight yet."

"Let them go," Sasuke signed.

Sakura nodded and Naruto agreed. It appeared that his clones weren't going to kill them either.

And then, suddenly Mikoto was in the clearing, a trickle of chakra trailing out of her fingers. The pair fell to the ground as if their strings had been cut.

"What-" Sasuke said outloud as Kakashi flashed out of their hiding spot in a sealless Shunshin and decapitated both the girl and the other boy in one circular motion.

A casual foot brought all of Kakashi's weight on Ryuichi's neck.

"Oh my god," Sakura whispered.

Mikoto's lips thinned imperceptibly.

"Needless?" Kakashi wondered aloud at her. "Of course not!" He smiled magnanimously. "Sometimes…" he trailed off, before his smile widened from behind his mask. "You have to go above and beyond the call of duty!"

One of Naruto's earth clone dispelled over the campfire. The other four began digging pits to bury the bodies. The five of them continued back to Konoha in silence, with the exception of Kakashi who was whistling the theme song to some Saturday morning kid's cartoon.

3

If Mikoto didn't know something was wrong when she stepped into the Hokage's office, she found out rather quickly as her old jonin sensei put her through the window with a heavy hand.

She let her elbows break the glass behind her and bent her head forward as to not allow it to hit the frame as she plunged out onto the rooftop of a tea shop. She landed gracefully.

"Miki-chan. Training Ground Eight. Now," said a rather old, if unimpressively sized, toad next to her.

She knew what this was about and while she was a good enough ninja to show none of her fear, she was shaking inside.

This meant that Jiraiya had found out about The Plot. There was no doubt about it.

Jiraiya didn't take his students to the vast expanse of dirt and sand on Training Ground Eight unless he wanted to punish them.

Of course, her teammates had been the target of his ire more often than she was. He did always have a soft spot for her, even more so than Minato.

She ghosted over the tiles of the various rooftops and weighed her options.

She could go and attempt to convince her teacher not to kill her. There was a somewhat okay chance of that, Jiraiya was reasonable and would listen to her, at the very least.

She could run away, now, and assume a different form for the rest of her life and slowly grow to old age. As long as she didn't make any contact with anyone she had ever known, ever and hid herself in a village of Snow Country - where Jiraiya had the third least amount of contacts, she could do it.

But if he were to raise his hand to her, he would expect her to run. She doubted she could outrun him, at least without surprise and preparation.

She could try to kill him. But her chances of success were about as close to zero as getting away from this scenario scot-free.

Before long, she was standing behind Jiraiya on a rocky outcrop of Training Ground Eight.

She decided to put her pride away and knelt.

Jiraiya, who still had not turned to face her, scoffed. "I'm surprised. I thought you'd run. You could have hid somewhere in Snow or Grass, y'know. Would have taken me fifteen, twenty years to find you and by that point you could have moved on to other places, taking new disguises. You wouldn't get to see any family ever again, but some people would pay that price to survive."

"I would not disrespect you like that, Jiraiya-sensei."

Jiraiya scoffed again and slowly rotated to look her in the eyes. "I'm surprised you'd admit to respecting me, ever. You were always the proudest of my three."

Despite herself, Mikoto protested. "I was not as proud as Minato!" Jiraiya liked it when she was being authentic.

"I was top kunoichi!" Jiraiya mocked, his pitch frightening similar to hers. There was no warmth in his voice - it was clear that he was being funny because he didn't want to do this, he didn't want to deal with this scenario.

They looked at each other for a minute.

Mikoto took a gamble. "You should kill me, sensei. Tsukuyomi knows I deserve it."

"Aye, he does."

She winced internally.

"I don't think I will though," Jiraiya said heavily. "I don't think I could kill you if you weren't fighting back. I can certainly drag you into the cells and have you tortured. Or worse, confined indefinitely with no human contact. Or starved, even."

He looked at her sharply.

Mikoto knew better than to wave her masks around. Jiraiya had taught her how to hide herself as much as she had tried to perfect it, so she let herself frown.

Mikoto felt the blow before it hit her - Jiraiya was fast enough so that if she were some just-passed jonin, the very air he displaced with a blow could send her careening. But she wasn't, so she waited for his fist to find her face.

He stopped an inch away from her eye. She hadn't seen him move the rest of his body, but that was the deception of Gama no Ken, his almighty Toad Fist. The Three Sannin, each had developed a way to deceive Dojutsu, whether or not they were foreign strains. Orochimaru had pieced together the Dance of the Standing Snake with the bodies of defected Hyuuga and Uchiha - or perhaps innocent ones. Tsunade had created the Slug's Grapple using old tricks in Senju scrolls. Her own teacher had revamped Toad Style with a little bit of imagination alone.

They were rather effective, especially if her eyes weren't even on. She had taken special care not to activate them by instinct, as most Uchiha were prone to do under high stress situations.

Even so, the Sharingan in her left eye activated as she channeled chakra to it to ensure that Jiraiya's fist didn't burst the blood vessels in in despite the lack of contact.

"What am I going to do with you, Miki-chan?" Jiraiya whispered as her Sharingan faded away and his hand dropped to his side slowly. She was still kneeling and he was still sitting.

"You can seal my Chakra. Add gravity seals onto me so I move like a civilian."

Jiraiya shook his head. "That would be a gift, not a punishment. You've retired for good, what is it, three times already? Nice try though," he said, a hint of his old playfulness in his tone.

They stared at one another for a moment. Jiraiya looked disappointed. Mikoto looked contrite.

"Why don't you go report to the Hokage, first. I'll figure out what your punishment is. I told Kakashi to take the kids out to lunch anyway."

Mikoto turned to leave.

"Hey, don't cry. You know I don't want to hurt you."

But it was a little late for that.

4

It was fairly obvious to Mikoto that she was not in the Hokage's good graces, but that didn't stop her from being angry about Kakashi's explanation of why it was necessary to kill the three Iwa missing nin genin.

"So one of them had a real grudge against me. They were all approaching cautiously, when he dashed forwards and told Naruto's clone that I had killed his father. So I killed their jonin-sensei, who probably convinced them to go missing-nin. And then I killed the three genin because Team Seven couldn't."

Sarutobi nodded. "Yes, I do believe they're a bit too young to be killing children just a tad older than them in peacetime."

Mikoto was furious, even if she kept her smile straight and narrow. Hatake Kakashi was getting away with killing kids that they could have brought back to Konoha and reformed. Or let go, even. They were hardly any danger without their jonin sensei.

"Kakashi," the Hokage reprimanded without a hint of fire. "You could have brought them back. They could have been reformed. They did leave that hellhole after all, didn't they?"

Kakashi shook his head. "Couldn't take the chance. The genin were in danger. Naruto could have been in danger."

Sarutobi nodded gravely. "You did well, Kakashi."

Mikoto didn't agree, but she really wasn't in any position to file a complaint.