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Chapter Text

Pain, acrid in its familiarity, lanced down his nerves, originating from his eyes. An unbidden groan clawed its way up his scratchy throat and through his gummy mouth, parting his lips like great heavy oak doors, the sort that guarded the hidden chambers in the Daimyo’s estate and were barred with thick logs.

Kakashi wasn’t supposed to know about those. But there was a great deal in life that Kakashi knew when he wasn’t supposed to, and things that happened to Kakashi that weren’t supposed to.

Fearing the riot his body would put up in protest, he kept his sharingan closed while he cracked open his normal eye, only for it to stab his brain in the exact manner he was so used to from his sharingan.

“Whatever,” he huffed near inaudibly, testing his speech and finding his words scraping at his ears and his lips cracking around the syllables. Fresh blood wept from his bottom lip in a languid teardrop and, when he wiped it away, his torn gloved hands got caught on the friction of matte dried blood upon skin.

His hands slid from his bare chin and tangled in the remains of his mask, the black fabric dry and crusted and in no fit shape to be used. At least his headband was still in place, he mused as he pulled it down over both of his eyes.

He should be alert. He’d say panicked but that wasn’t his style. Those in the throes of panic were subject to impaired decision-making skills and flighty behaviour, the former Kakashi was admittedly guilty of on occasion and the latter a completely foreign feeling.

But as he catalogued how he was too exhausted to move, how his weapon pouch was almost empty, and how he had very little idea of where he was, he couldn’t find it within himself to quicken his thinking or heighten his senses. A crushing weight sat heavily on his chest and prevented him from doing so.

He thought Obito had come around, that Kakashi had gotten through to him. Foolish.

Kakashi may have spent a lifetime stood in front of that facade of a grave, sending words out to oblivion and building this terrific idea of Obito in his mind, an idol, a saint, but, to Obito, Kakashi was that same asshole who’d relentlessly bullied him in his youth and then went on to kill his comrades, purposefully or not.

As Obito was dying, lay in an alien tundra with a death bed of unforgiving ice beneath his spine, cold fingers, somehow colder than the frigid air, grasped onto Kakashi’s wrist. Obito smiled, so softly, so sweetly, a honeyed lie crystallised in blood-red sugar, as he sent Kakashi far away to a place where he had no hope of aiding his students and the rest of the shinobi world.

He couldn’t pinpoint how exactly he knew he wasn’t in the Elemental Nations, never mind Fire Country, but it was a piece of knowledge intrinsic to his very being, along with the feeling that his existence was fundamentally different now. Several somethings had shifted, and he wasn’t so sure of the composition of the world and himself within it.

With a ragged sigh, he took his freshly bloodied hand and formed the familiar sign ingrained in him from when Sakumo first showed him the Hatake ninken contract (his final gift, perhaps) and summoned Pakkun.

“Boss,” said a comforting voice tinged with worry after an uncharacteristic dark almost wet sound in place of the usual soft puff that accompanied summoning, “you don’t look good.”

“It’s the mask, isn’t it?” Kakashi croaked, a flickering smile weak as an oil lamp running on its last dregs struggling to light his lips, “I always knew I’d look terrible without it.”

“I can’t even see your face with all that blood, Boss,” Pakkun said with no semblance of humour, close to his right ear. “I’d clean it but I don’t like the taste of iron. Summon Bull and maybe a couple of the others so we can get you out of here. Hell, summon the whole pack, I think we need all the help we can get.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Kakashi said, adverse to his fingers which were already poised to summon. He’d never really been one for self-preservation, but he at least had to pretend at making an effort. “My chakra feels like… athletic sludge, and I can’t open my eyes.”

“Athletic sludge, Boss? Did you borrow that from your books?”

“No, but it sounds like I could’ve, hmm? Maybe I should try writing since… my favourite author... retired. I may be lacking in experience but I have a wild imagination to make up for it.”

“Gross. Just summon the pack, Boss.”

“You make it sound like I’m the one who should be calling you boss...” Kakashi mumbled, words slurring and tone bland but light. His bloodied fingers touched down onto concrete and that same dark sound signalled the summoning of his pack as a different darkness took hold of his consciousness.

There was an inkling in the back of his head that perhaps he might be dying, but his thoughts were so syrupy and slow that he didn’t think on his regrets, although he had many.

“O-Obito?”

A vast expanse of nothing stretched out limitlessly, the only break in the endless void being the brutalist square platforms, the bases of which were lost to the darkness below. However brief his stay had been while marred by the adrenalin of a fight that decided upon everything he believed in, Kakashi knew the Kamui dimension, it was not a place easily forgotten.

There was no echo to his voice but there was a feeling that somebody miles away would be able to hear it as though they were next to him.

There was no response.

Obito wasn’t here and perhaps he never would be. As Kakashi jumped from pillar to pillar, he found evidence of Obito’s past existence in his belongings, but they were stale and held no traces of him. A collection of eerie spiral masks, a closet of clothes mostly consisting of dark tones and long robes, various weapon stashes, sweets which were dusty yet somehow untouched by rot, and other such miscellaneous items a shinobi of Obito’s calibre could be expected to own.

Kakashi felt light in this world unlike how he had before, like nothing could touch him and nothing would fall out of his favour. Yet this feeling came along with the cloying sense of being trapped and closed off from a door sealed by powers beyond his reach.

There would be no returning to his students through here. He just knew.

Ice thrust through his veins and forced the air from his lungs as he gasped involuntarily and water found entrance in his parted lips and sought to make its home inside his lungs.

Reflexively he shot up and thrashed, choking the water from his body as someone said something vaguely soothing but stern, a rhythmic thumping on his back aiding his recovery.

“-wimp, Boss, it’s for your own good, although you could have been a little less rough Bull,” Pakkun’s reprimanding voice faded in and, with the return of his other senses, he recognised the weight on his back as Bisuke’s front paws.

Chilling water flowed up to his hips where he sat upright in a pebbled riverbed, the texture of the rocks beneath his curious but still weak fingers and the tinkling of a current betraying the brook for what it was. A couple of his dogs were happily splashing along and he could hear two of them chasing each other in the distance with gleeful yips.

Sight being the only sense that hadn’t returned to him, he slipped off his headband with numbing hands and viewed the world in breathtaking clarity.

Clear aqua drew a winding line from the setting sun to his figure, xanthous hues transforming the brook into a mirage of colour and dappling the verdant trees, casting speckled shadows along the forest floor and catching in the metal of his dog’s headbands.

He observed every detail with startling precision, each individual leaf on the horizon cut out from the gradient sky, the clouds so crisp it was as though he could touch them. Mist wound its way between thin tree trunks and settled atop the water like a blanket, though it didn’t hamper his vision in the slightest.

The combined might of two sharingan eyes.

“That’s not good,” Pakkun said from where he sat on the river bank closest to Kakashi, overseeing the rest of the pack as they had their fun. Bull lay on Kakashi’s other side, chastised from the earlier remark.

“No, it isn’t,” Kakashi agreed and pulled down his damp headband. He could already feel the drain on his newly icky feeling chakra. “I don’t suppose you fancy a change in career? Guide dog, maybe? Civilians love guide dogs, you’ll get lots of scritches from strangers cooing over you.”

“I can be ninken and a guide dog, you know,” Pakkun replied, “the pack already talked about it when you couldn’t open your normal eye. Bisuke and Guruku were quite excited.”

“Aw, aren’t my pack just the cutest? Including you, Pakkun, grumpy old men can be cute too, sometimes,” Kakashi smiled and looked vaguely in the direction of Pakkun’s chakra signature, also sludgy yet quick and all-around weird.

“I’m plenty cute,” Pakkun agreed, “what’s not cute is you freezing to death now.”

“And who’s idea was it to dunk me naked in a freezing brook, hm? Speaking of which, where are my clothes?”

He couldn’t begrudge Pakkun or Bull for his rude awakening, not when dried blood washed from his skin like a thick film of dust swiped from a half-forgotten photo frame. His skin could breathe and he was reminded that there were still some people out there who knew and cared for him in this foreign place, who could help him return home.

“Akino’s washing them behind you,” Pakkun said and Kakashi took a small peak with one eye and found that Akino was indeed washing his tattered clothes by aggressively shaking them in the water like he would with a stick he didn’t want to give back yet.

“I might need a new outfit,” Kakashi said a little despairingly while scratching lightly at his cheek with the finger he’d used to prop up his headband.

“Just be happy you’re not caked in blood, Boss,” Pakkun said, quietly.

Later, when the sun slipped beneath the covers of the land and the moon took its place, he and his pack lounged by a moderately sized fire pit dug into the ground by dutiful paws and lined with stones by matching snouts while Kakashi dipped in and out of awareness.

The flames came close to licking at his bare chest but he could barely feel the warmth, the only thing stopping his tired brain from pushing himself into the tinder being the bandages his pack had painstakingly wound around his wounds. He had enough sense about him to know that cloth was flammable.

Bull’s hulking figure emerged from the darkness that surrounded their little clearing, the flickering light twisting shadows and making him seem larger than he was, and came to a stop in front of the fire. His maw yawned open and tumbling out came a veritable heap of slobbery fish that almost put the fire out.

Bisuke and Guruko yipped in delight while Akino tsked and went about stoking the fire some more before it puttered out underneath the onslaught of slippery fish and saliva. Distantly, Kakashi knew this wasn’t how they were supposed to go about cooking fish, but the small fire jutsu he’d used to get to the fire going had taken a lot out of him. Not to mention that it hadn’t felt right.

Pakkun slapped away Shiba’s sneaky paws, preventing him from taking a raw fish for himself. They could eat raw fish, hell, Kakashi could eat raw fish, but his pack seemed to be putting in a little extra effort and Kakashi was loath to stop them, if only to save himself the ordeal.

“How long are you guys planning on sticking around?” Kakashi asked as he slipped the headband over his eyes once more. Periodically, he tested the drain but he instinctively knew his limits. Regardless, he wanted to see.

“Don’t dismiss us,” Urushi said, characteristically abrupt but surprising nonetheless.

“... okay, I won’t if you don’t want to. But why?”

“We weren’t home,” Bisuke pitched in. “This isn’t Fire Country and that place wasn’t home.” Although Kakashi couldn’t see, he could hear the shiver in Bisuke’s voice.

“We’ve changed, Boss,” Pakkun added, “so have you.”

They all knew it, huh. But what had changed, and where were they?

With that thought as an anchor, he drifted in and out as he had been doing since the sun had set, until he was finally lulled to sleep by the ambience of his pack and the different yet all the same whisperings of the woods.

“-oss, Boss, wake up,” quiet harsh words dragged Kakashi from the grip of his deep slumber and he raised himself with a tactical cautiousness in the face of Pakkun’s alert tone.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, ears pricking to the sound of two of his ninken hurriedly putting the fire out. A crispy fish was pushed into his hands by a large paw and he bit into the burnt flesh without protest. He hadn’t eaten for what he estimated was a day, he needed his energy.

“There’s something thick and dark in the woods, around twenty-two metres north from us, it’s strong and it’s not human,” Pakkun explained and another fish was nudged into Kakashi’s hand by a smaller paw, this one nearly raw. Again, he swallowed it down without complaint.

“Let’s not engage with unknowns, head south,” Kakashi instructed as he got up on shaking legs, Bull’s large form coming to support him at his side. He patted his head in thanks and worked through his lethargy stealthily moving ahead and transitioning to a light jog.

He was about to remove his headband when Pakkun jumped onto his shoulder and placed a paw over his raised hand. “Don’t. If that thing catches up to us, which it might because it’s headed our way, you’ll need that. I don’t know what that thing is, but I know it’s bad.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I’m still not thinking straight. I’ll follow your lead.”

They travelled as quiet as can be for several minutes, that thing a steady presence in the back of Kakashi’s mind as it drew gradually closer, Pakkun a tense talisman on his shoulder.

Until the presence spiked and Pakkun barked, “run!”

A small stampede ensued as several sets of paws picked up in speed, smashing against the undergrowth of the forest. Kakashi’s lungs burned as he instinctively corrected himself when almost falling over stray roots and his feet pounded against the dirt. There were more efficient methods of escape, but none were available to him as he relied on the sharp tang of adrenaline pumping through his veins to shove him forwards.

“Shit,” Akino swore, the word almost taken away by the wind, and his small body flew through the air a moment later, the air pressure cutting past Kakashi’s face as his flailing paws tried and failed to grip his flak jacket as he shot past him.

Kakashi didn’t hesitate to thrust his headband from his eyes and locate Akino as Bull picked him up by the scruff of his neck and continued running. Bull growled and his big body came to a skidding halt and something crashed in the shadows just ahead of them.

The pack came to a united standstill. Trees groaned as they parted for a towering figure cloaked in darkness, its looming shadow blacker than the night and swallowing everything it touched whole.

“Fire style: candlelight jutsu,” Kakashi said under his breath, forming a quick sign, and a small bright light burst to life on the tip of his index finger.

Flushed in yellow, a grotesque figure leant forwards, its bulbous lips stretching into an unnatural smile that cut its face diagonally. Two bulging eyes followed the trajectory of its slope, pupils turned upwards in untold hysteria. Its head alone was the length of Kakashi’s body, the rest of it in a deceptive slump behind it.

Looking at it with the sharingan by the light of fire, it shouldn’t have been able to move that fast. But it had. And it would.

Rearing back, it sucked air into its lungs with such strength that Kakashi had to grab a hold of Uhei and Bull used his bulk as a blockade to prevent Urushi from rolling into its jaws.

Cheeks puffed out like that of an over large misshapen hamster, the monster hummed a giggle and Kakashi predicted what would follow.

“Earth style: rock wall jutsu!” Kakashi yelled as he brought up a barrier just in time for a gust of wind that rivalled the likes of Temari’s most unforgiving wind release. Rock crumbled and the shockwave of the impact sent half his pack to the floor, but the wall held.

Squealing, the monster fell back in the backlash of its own rebounded attack, and smacked the ground with its six-fingered fists as if staging a tantrum. Taking advantage of its strange temperament, Kakashi jumped atop the wall, formed the tiger hand seal and his stomach became molten.

Without announcement, a torrent of flames burst from his lips and engulfed the monster, transforming its petulant cries into true screams of agony.

As the flames died down into embers dusting a pile of ash, echoes of its tormented final moments reverberated through the forest, or perhaps just in Kakashi’s skull. Nobody moved, all eyes glued to the horrifying scene until Pakkun patted his cheek.

“It wasn’t human,” Pakkun said.

“It wasn’t,” Kakashi agreed, followed by a couple of woofs of agreement in various pitches. “This forest isn’t safe. Somebody check on Akino, I’m just gonna close my eyes for a minute.”

He slumped against the tree to his right, uncaring for how the bark bit into his temple, and sighed. He was so very far from top form, his body hurt.

“Boss? Boss, come on, you were the one who said it wasn’t safe, we need to move,” Pakkun’s strained voice broke through the fuzzy cotton cloaking his brain and he weakly batted away his prodding paws.

“Gimme… minute.”

“Right, right. Come on Bull, let’s get him on your back and go somewhere el…”

Everything faded away.

Drip, Drip, Drip.

Kakashi sighed as he realised he was waking up on his own terms and without the chill of fresh brook water sluicing down his neck. Or perhaps not, he frowned consideringly, a distinctive wet snout was nuzzling at his left wrist's pulse point. He shifted his fingers over the snout, gently calming it, before smoothing his hand over soft fur and scratching behind floppy ears.

“Hello, Guruku,” Kakashi grunted and lifted himself up, his hands finding purchase on concrete and his back resting against a wall of the same composition.

Lifting his headband over one eye, he surveyed his surroundings and a firmer smile fixed itself upon his lips.

Staring intently at each other, Urushi and Shiba lay crouched beneath a yellowed window, bathed in the dim stained light, playing a game of Red Tomato.

To the left of them, Bisuke stretched out lazily across a battered wooden stool fidgeting with a couple of fish bones. He was interrupted as Uhei scampered over and deposited an old tennis ball of unknown origins onto the stool and the two were instantly scrabbling over it in an uncoordinated game of pass.

Pakkun, ever the keen-eyed leader, lay deceptively relaxed by the entrance to the dark hallway on Kakashi’s right while he oversaw everything. With Guruku basking in Kakashi’s affection, that only left two dogs unaccounted for.

“Where’s Bull and Akino?” Kakashi called over to Pakkun, who lifted his head at his address.

“Akino wanted to scout out the area but his ankles are still sprained so I sent Bull with him,” he replied.

The area. Kakashi turned his attention back to the stained window and sought what was beyond the cracked glass panes, identifying murky branches swaying to a light breeze. Second floor at least, he surmised, maybe third floor but the trees he’d encountered so far were practically saplings when compared to the thick towering forests of Fire Country.

“Still? How long have I been out?” He observed the dancing leaves for a few moments more before returning his gaze to Pakkun. He did appear more tired than usual, perhaps his sluggish demeanour was not a complete ruse.

“About a day. We’ve had food before you ask. Bull carried you and we went back to where we began since the forest is dangerous. It’s the same abandoned building except we’re a floor below since we didn’t stop to clean up before we left last time.”

Yeah. Kakashi hadn’t laid eyes on the undoubtedly gruesome scene that lay above them, but his mind’s eye had many first-hand sources to pull from.

“What’s the situation?” He asked, falling back into routine. With his surroundings accounted for, he pulled down his headband, secure in the safety of his pack.

“We’re on the outskirts of a large settlement without walls, the buildings get taller the further in you get. This building is four storeys high and mostly hidden by the trees, and it’s strange. The place is completely gutted like it wasn’t even furnished before whoever built it up and left. No monsters though, and no people.”

As Pakkun spoke, Shiba squeaked and there was the sound of a disgruntled retreat as padding paws jumped down from the windowsill and settled down elsewhere. It appeared Urushi had won.

“So there are people, that’s… good.” Kakashi rubbed his chin in mock thought, a gesture that had its roots in pretend but had since become a genuine mannerism, and then paused at the reminder of his ruined mask. “But also bad. I don’t have any money and I probably look like I’ve gone through hell and back. Or rather, I went through hell and popped out on the other side. Feels like I have.”

“You have,” Pakkun huffed.

“Right. We could easily live in the forest but the forest is unsafe. We can’t live in an established village just yet. This building is a good compromise. It’s also the best place to figure out what the hell happened to me since I started here. There’s got to be something that points to an explanation and a way back.”

It made sense, logically. There had to be some sort of lead. He had to believe there was. He had to believe he could return.

Guruku sneezed and jolted out of Kakashi’s reach. After he recovered from his surprise, he whined, “I’m hungry.”

Kakashi’s stomach agreed on his behalf with a rumble.

“We can hunt in the forest, let’s just make sure we don’t stray too far or go at night,” Pakkun shifted, presumably standing up.

“No need,” Akino’s serious voice broke through the shadows of the hallway as he entered the muted light of the room, Kakashi raising his headband upon hearing his voice so he could visibly ascertain he was okay. Bull followed closely behind with… several glossy bags in his mouth?

Everyone stopped what they were doing and formed a circle in the centre of the sparse concrete room where Bull dropped the bags, saliva dripping from their handles. With a small thud, he sat back down, and Akino took centre stage.

“The village out there is very different from our ideas of what a village looks like. The clothes are weird, there’s a lot of glass, the buildings are tall, there’s a lot of shops, and there are these metal... things that speed down the road with people in them like a carriage would, but I didn't see any horses,” he explained and then kicked over one of the bags with his non-sprained front paw, a shiny pink one.

A varied selection of wrapped meat poured out of the bag to the ear curling orchestra of crinkling plastic, a sound that held all of his ninken’s attention as the association of treats no doubt pinged along their synapses.

“I hope you paid for that like an upstanding citizen,” Kakashi commented lightly and picked up a raw chicken. Blood escaped from a tiny hole in the plastic, easy enough to spot with the sharingan. He put the chicken down before the rivulets snaking down his arm could grow in number and wiped his hand across his trousers. Uhei, who sat closest to Kakashi, shook his head at the mess.

“Talking dogs are even more of a rarity here than in Konoha, didn’t get the chance to. Not that I would anyway since I don’t have any money. I didn’t come across a single shinobi in the four hours I’ve been gone, not even anyone with the weird chakra we have. All civilians.”

“There’s no shinobi, then,” Kakashi mused and shifted to inspect another piece of packaged meat but aborted the movement as a wound on his abdomen pinched his nerves. Forgetting his disapproval of the inappropriate use of trousers in the place of a handkerchief, Uhei shuffled closer and rested his head on Kakashi’s lap. Thankful for the silent display of comfort, Kakashi idly patted Uhei’s head as he listened to Akino.

“That’s our working theory,” Akino nodded and knocked over another bag, a blue one with the apparent word ‘BURBERRY’ written across the front, and revealed several bundles of cloth. “Got you some clothes that aren’t hanging by threads, masks in there too.”

Mindful of his injury bound limits, Kakashi bent over Uhei and picked up a bright yellow tee-shirt with the tips of his fingers, reminiscent of how he would hold the full green bag from the little food recycling bin on his apartment’s kitchen counter when the plastic lid refused to close. Fresh dead bodies, he could deal with just fine. Anything on the cusp or in the process of rotting? Disgusting, like that eyesore of a t-shirt.

“I just took whatever they had in the back.” Akino shrugged as if he hadn’t handed Kakashi a bright neon tee that practically screamed ‘LOOK AT ME’ with its eye-searing colour. “You’ll blend in, the people aren’t trying to hide out there.”

At least there were masks. Medical masks, but masks nonetheless. The white bands were a small line of discomfort behind his ears but the familiarity of fabric pressed against his face overruled any minor inconveniences.

The final bag toppled over and all the ninken collectively groaned. Collars.

“I don’t like it either, but we’ll blend in.”

Yeah, blend into the new society they’ve found themselves in. Figure out the customs, traditions, adapt. Invent a convincing backstory accordingly, borrowing from little tidbits he learnt from the people he spoke to. Treat it like a deep undercover mission.

Ignore the encroaching dark presences mere metres deep into the forest, trailing along the perimeter of the building. Seal the whole building with the most advanced teachings Minato-sensei never meant to bestow upon him, but he learnt anyway when he went through his belongings after his death. Traps, everywhere. Don't think about Naruto, don't think about any of his students. Make everything completely safe.

Everything was going to be fine. It was just a mission. Objective: Return Home.

Chapter Text

“I still don’t get it,” Itadori said, voice nearly lost to the hubbub of traffic and the way he continued looking ahead and therefore away from Megumi didn’t help his case.

At least the cars were thinning the further they walked away from the town centre. Megumi never paid attention to cars, he didn’t see the appeal in learning all the different brand names and scouring over magazines when he couldn’t afford to buy one. He was also too young to drive but he’d met people like that in middle school so age clearly wasn’t a factor.

But he knew enough to know the cars bumbling by on their right were less expensive than those crowding the city centre and parked outside restaurants. They were approaching the area where the less advantageous lived and, thus, the dark forest that lay on the outskirts of town.

“What’s there not to get?” Kugisaki asked, eyes focused on her phone. If he craned his neck, he could see her manicured nails scrolling down a Korean make-up outlet page, occasionally tapping only to dismiss the product and continue her endless scrolling.

“We’re investigating disappearing curses. Usually, it’s people who do the disappearing, because of curses. So this is good, right?” Itadori elaborated, turning to face them while walking backwards. His finger scratched his chin, forehead furrowed in deep thought. Not deep enough, or perhaps too deep, but Megumi knew he’d find a middle ground eventually.

“It means there’s someone with greater power exorcising them, probably. A curse or an unregistered sorcerer,” Megumi explained and looked to the clear sky. Maybe they could stop for lunch once they arrived at the perimeter and completed a basic scout. The sun was approaching its highest point, a few waifish clouds clothing it with a translucent cloak that did little to abate the unrelenting heat.

“What if it’s something? It’s rare, but I read about sinkhole seals and even offensive seals that can make curses disappear,” Kugisaki said, clicking the power button on her phone and slipping it into her pocket.

“That sounds cool,” Itadori nodded and deftly jumped backwards over a stray rock that would have tripped up almost anyone else. “Hey, I don’t think I’ve actually seen anyone use seals. I mean, they’re definitely a thing, I had them on me when Gojo-sensei brought me in, but I’ve never seen someone make them.”

“Huh, now that I think about it, I don’t think I have either,” Kugisaki frowned consideringly before shrugging, “they’re mostly pretty boring anyway, they just trap things at the end of the day.”

That was true. Megumi hadn’t really thought about them much either. It was common knowledge that a seal's effectiveness against a sorcerer or curse was simply down to their level of power. A second-grade curse could easily escape a third-grade seal, and so on. There wasn’t much to ponder.

“Yeah, guess you’re right,” Itadori shrugged and switched back to walking forwards like a regular person, albeit with an upbeat skip in his step.

“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Kugisaki asked with a twitch, a strained point to her voice. It wasn’t overly noticeable and Megumi hadn’t known his two classmates for that long - this was only their second assignment outside of classroom walls - but he was getting a feel for their baselines. Kugisaki was agitated by something, and it was a safe bet to assume it was the reason behind her fruitless digital window shopping and irritable tone.

“Oh!” Itadori smiled, oblivious, and threw a grin over his shoulder, “Sukuna shut up!”

When Itadori didn’t follow up on that, Megumi asked, “... was Sukuna talking just now?”

“Nope! I’m happy because he hasn’t said a single thing since we entered this town. He’s still there, it’s like I can feel him brooding, but he’s quiet.” His grin grew larger although thinned a little with contemplation. Did Sukuna talk so often that a small bit of peace and quiet was remarkable? Internally grimacing, Megumi set aside the thought.

Like a physical thing, Kugisaki’s ire switched direction as her gaze unfocused. “I guess that would be something to be happy about.”

“Yeah! So what’s up with you, Kugisaki?” Itadori skipped backwards until he was in line with the rest of them, their unit taking up the width of the pavement. Where they’d been dropped off prematurely at the city centre by Ichiji who’d been called away for something more important, they’d often had to squeeze by in single file.

“Nothing’s up with me!” Kugisaki’s focus was back, Itadori bearing the full front of it. Subtly leaning back, Megumi removed himself as the obstacle between the two of them and watched as Itadori jumped back slightly in the face of her warning glare.

He recovered admirably and held up two placating arms with a sheepish expression. “Okay, okay! But you kinda just shouted at me.”

“It’s nothing!” Kugisaki shouted again before coming back to herself and lowering her voice with a sigh, “everything is fine. I just have a bad feeling, is all.”

Itadori blinked. “Oh?”

“Don’t ‘oh’ me, I told you it’s nothing. It’s probably because we’re back in the countryside, I hate the countryside,” Kugisaki shrugged and looked steadfastly ahead, settled on the matter.

Attention waning, Megumi dropped out of the conversation and retracted his already limited involvement as his eyes locked onto the distant figure of a dog lazing on a brick garden wall.

“Oh yeah, I remember you said something about that. Makes sense.”

Little paws crossed, chin resting, eyes barely open - it was adorable. Looking at the agile build and skinny limbs, he identified it as a reddish greyhound with a white snout.

“Yup, so stop asking me about it.”

Around its neck was a bright yellow collar, light catching in the little metal plate hanging at the centre. Squinting, he tried to make out the engraving as they drew closer. It looked like a symbol of some kind.

“Got it!”

A swirly circle? It looked deliberate in its design, simple but unique. His eyes tracked the dog as they passed it, head turning until it hurt to look in its direction. Ah. Dogs were great.

A puttering car rolled past them. A woman began to hose her modest vegetable plot in the garden two houses ahead of them. A crow settled on a postbox.

With nothing to distract him, he returned to the recently concluded conversation. Tensions appeared to have settled now, although the slight trench dug between Kugisaki’s brows was a clear indication of her unease. Meanwhile, Itadori was back to enjoying his blissful respite from Sukuna.

Hm. Megumi hadn’t sensed anything particularly out of the ordinary so far, but there was that so-called ‘woman’s intuition’, or so he’d been told. Either way, there was no point in stressing about vague premonitions of potentially maybe-bad future events. They’d handle it. Jujutsu tech may be short of sorcerers to hand, but the missions assigned were never too far outside of the sorcerer’s capabilities, unless the circumstances were truly dire.

After much walking and varied complaints from the other two about how Ichiji could have spared a minute to drive them just a bit further, complaints Megumi couldn’t help but hum in agreement with despite his better judgement, they reached their destination.

Before, the distant forest was a foggy ripple of green in the city backdrop. However, when walking right up to the perimeter with the afternoon sun baking him inside of his uniform, it became a formidable wall of dense greenery impossible to see beyond two metres within. As he peered into the darkness, a contradictory chill clung to his exposed hands and neck irrespective of the hot weather. Hm.

“I’m not stumbling through that on an empty stomach,” Kugisaki declared and spun around, hooking an arm through Itadori’s and dragging him backwards.

Itadori let himself be dragged for a few moments before he shook himself and walked ahead unaided. “Yeah! And we can ask around about the forest too while we eat.”

“Alright,” Megumi said lightly as though his stomach hadn’t been cramping for the better part of the last hour. “There’s a bakery after two lefts and a right, Gojo-sensei would probably appreciate it if we got him something sweet.”

Distance from the forest lessened the strange atmosphere until it dissipated. There was definitely something in that forest.

“Screw that guy, I’m saving up my money for when we finally get to really go into Tokyo. I need to see the sights, buy the clothes, and take all the aesthetic photos - that’s what people do in Tokyo, you know, when they’re not pummelling curses,” Kugisaki huffed and picked up the pace.

The bakery itself was a quaint affair, tucked in between two residential buildings with a faded metal sign denoting its existence. Shadows from the washing line on the balcony above stretched across the modest awning and sunlight glanced off the glazed display pastries.

To the tinkling of a bell, they entered and a quiet atmosphere fell over them like a cozy blanket. Not too dissimilar to a library but much more relaxed; there was this unspoken necessity to keep any excess noise at a minimum. Soft music trailed in from the ajar door to the backroom, underlaid with even softer humming. That, and the clinking of needles, was the only sound invading the small interior.

Clad in a knitted grey scarf and small oval glasses was the old lady manning the till, aged eyes trained to her clacking knitting needles. It was hard to decipher what she was trying to make, but it looked like a toddler-sized hood, or maybe a cape.

A fluffy face peered over the counter from the lady’s lap, its droopy eyes cataloguing each of them before nudging the needles with its nose. Around its neck lay a knitted hood along with something else that glinted in the light flooding from the glass storefront. Mystery knitting case solved.

“Oh! Dearie me, I didn’t catch the bell again, thank you Bisuke - hello dears, can I help you?” The lady set aside her needles on the counter and gestured to the glass display of pastries to her side with one hand while she adjusted her glasses with the other.

“We’re here for lunch,” Itadori beamed and immediately took to the display, as did Kugisaki. Megumi kept his eyes on the dog. At some point they had entered a staring contest. He wasn’t sure when his thoughts of ‘aw, so cute’ morphed into ‘so this is a battle of wills, then’ but now he was stuck.

“Fushiguro, what about you?” Itadori’s voice snagged his attention and saved him from the fast-approaching humiliating defeat his watering eyes could taste on the horizon. He still lost, but it wasn’t his fault and that was the key difference.

“I’ll just have… the karepan,” he said, choosing the first option his eyes happened to settle on. Regret twinged in his stomach when he spotted the tonkatsu sando tantalisingly sat next to it.

“Here you are,” the lady said to the tune of gently crinkling paper and placed the goods beside the till. Each of them passed over their funds, Itadori retrieving a note from his sock, Kugisaki some coins from a little pink purse with rose gold lips, and Megumi his card from his school jacket’s custom inside pocket. As far outside of the city centre as they were, it wasn't a surprise he had to pick out some coins when the lady apologised for not having a card receiver.

“Mmm, smells delicious! Thank you,” Itadori sniffed enthusiastically before taking a bite out of a melonpan, sitting down at the booth closest to the counter as an afterthought. Due to the limitations of the space, there weren’t many places to sit, but the owner had worked with the room well.

A long counter ran along the length of the right wall, padded stools in pastel colours tucked underneath in a neat line. Nondescript photos of cakes and pastries decorated the wall, broken up by wall lamps encased with glass shades. The pink colouring of the glass contributed to the warm atmosphere in the room by casting the pastel furniture in rose. But it also served to maintain the low light, the glass thick and opaque. Sunlight streamed through the front windows, highlighting the occasional speck of dust, but fell short of half the room.

Two booths sat back to back on the other side, curled against the wall and able to sit six. The backrests were low and allowed for an easy flow of conversation between customers and the shop owner.

“I’ll second that,” Kugisaki nodded with a smile, joining Itadori in the booth. With her back to the counter, she set an elbow on the backrest and addressed the owner over her shoulder. “Hey, lady, is there anything interesting to do around here?”

Megumi took the seat next to Itadori and opposite Kugisaki and smoothed the packaging of his food over the table to use as a plate.

“Oh, you’re better off headed back into the city if you want interesting,” the owner said and picked up her needles, filling the room with clacking once more. “There’s a couple of small family restaurants close by and a few traditional ryokans, but that’s all there is to it.”

“What about the forest? Any hiking trails?” Megumi pitched in and hoped he looked like the sort who’d go on a hike for fun. He was physically fit but it was hard to tell when swamped in black, ‘slimming’ as Kugisaki would say. Walking along trails wasn’t a pastime of his, but it was the easiest guise for an expedition into a forest.

“No, don’t be going into that forest now, I tell you, it’s unsafe. You sweeties will be nabbed up in seconds,” the owner shook her head with a sigh, muttering something inaudible. The dog on her lap nuzzled her hand for a moment before dipping back beneath the counter.

“Whaddya mean? I’m pretty tough, I reckon I can take it.” Itadori mock flexed his arms and Kugisaki huffed before dragging his hands back down.

“No. Don’t even try it. No one who goes into the forest comes back out of it.” The owner’s tone was grave and brooked no argument. “Well, I guess that’s not completely true, there is one person who goes there often, but he’s got his wits about him, he knows what he’s doing...”

“Who? Maybe he can take us on a tour?” Itadori latched onto the trailing words and Megumi perked up at the possible lead.

As if on cue, the slightly ajar door swung open and a tall man carrying two trays of freshly baked bread pushed his way into the room, still humming along to the song in the kitchen. Beyond the door, Megumi saw a little old radio, the source of the music, along with several other miscellaneous retro items he wouldn’t generally expect to find in a kitchen.

The man deposited the trays on top of the glass display and began distributing the goods into their designated positions, oblivious to the trio of stares fixated on his face. Or rather, what covered his face since hardly any of it was visible.

A medical mask with inked paw prints hid his mouth and nose. Covering his eyes was a navy headband tied off on the right side of his head, his wild grey hair falling over the left of it although the majority stood up as though electrified.

The door opened again, followed by the padding of little paws against wooden floorboards. As the man set the trays aside and walked past the counter, a little pug revealed itself.

“I’m going to pick up the flour, shouldn’t take too long,” he said as he and the pug trotted to the door after hanging up his pink apron, displaying a deep green overlarge cable-knit jumper and black joggers. Before he left, he picked up the white cane propped up against the door frame where it would be hidden by the door when customers walked in.

“Just be back in time for dinner,” the woman rolled her eyes, not once lifting her attention from her knitting.

The man hummed unconvincingly and the bell tinkled as he left with the dog in tow. The lady shook her head in fond exasperation and muttered something about chronic tardiness.

“Kashi-kun’s not the tour guide type,” she said after a moment, and Megumi took a second to relate it back to the conversation they’d been having before the strange man interrupted them.

“Kashi? Who’s that?” Itadori helpfully asked the question on all of their minds while leaving out the bigger questions relating to the oddity who’d just breezed past them.

“Why, that was him just then,” the lady smiled and then frowned as she found an error in her knitting.

“... That man is the only guy who can hike in the forest? He’s blind,” Kugisaki said bluntly. Megumi would fault her for a lack of tact but it needed to be said. If the forest was so dangerous that able-bodied individuals never returned, then surely the chances of someone like that man would be even slimmer.

“Don’t go judging a book by its cover, young lady. Kashi-kun lives in the forest, even a blind man knows his way around his own home,” the owner tutted but her frown smoothed out when she fixed her knitting and resumed her casual pace.

“The forest is his home?” Megumi followed up. Each time a question was answered, several more cropped up.

“Well, I assume he has a house. I’ve never visited because it’s too dangerous, so don’t get it in your head about pestering him either. He’ll tell you just the same as I have,” she tutted again, clearly over the conversation. He doubted they’d get anything more useful out of her without alerting her to their plans to go against her will.

“Right, no pestering, got it.” Itadori nodded enthusiastically before sharing a conspiratorial glance with Megumi and Kugisaki.

They were definitely going to be pestering.

“Guys, I think we should just walk up to him and say hi or something,” Itadori said and scratched at his neck, sticking out like a sore thumb where he stood in the middle of a car park with nothing occupying him.

Meanwhile, Megumi had blended into the background, propped up against a street light checking his phone while surreptitiously glancing at their target. Kugisaki had gone for a more covert route, plastering herself against one of the trucks in the wholesale food store’s car park and peaking around the edge.

Currently, Megumi’s attention was split three ways. A) on the spiky-collared dog sat in the front driver's seat of one truck (because: dog). B) on the pug accompanying the target (because: also dog). And C) on the target (because: well, Megumi’s full attention should be on the target).

Said target stood just inside of the store, tapping through a phone like a technophobic elderly man. To be fair to him, Megumi had once accidentally switched his phone’s accessibility settings on and it had taken him an embarrassing length of time to return his phone to its default settings and he’d somehow managed to change his screensaver to a picture of Gojo-sensei. However, there had to be a certain point where a person learnt how their own phone worked regardless of settings, right?

“I’m pretty sure this is called stalking,” Itadori pointed out and Megumi couldn’t help feel a little affronted. Although, upon closer inspection, Itadori didn’t appear to take issue with their current mode of operation but rather like he just wanted to take the faster and more direct route. Or so his tapping foot and unbothered expression indicated.

From the patterns he had recognised so far between Itadori’s and Kugisaki’s interactions, Megumi expected some kind of irritated refute from the latter that would blow their cover. This was not what followed.

“Sometimes you’ve gotta do a little bit of stalking for the greater good, or you’ll never know how much of a weirdo a guy is when he stops faking it in front of you,” she said and Megumi raised his brow in considering surprised before shaking his head slightly and returning to the task at hand.

The man at the counter gestured to the trucks outside and appeared to offer something which the target rejected. A small exchange where one party attempted to insist while the other steadfastly refused with light laughter and a hand to his neck occurred before the man visibly sighed and retreated to the back. Some time passed and he returned with three heavy bags of flour.

Was the target going to carry them all the way back to the cafe? Without the extra load, the journey on foot was at least twenty minutes at a moderate pace. And then there was the target’s stature to consider. Beneath the baggy jumper and joggers, it was difficult to gauge his muscle mass, but with his height and slouched posture, Megumi couldn’t imagine he was much of a force to be reckoned with.

Crouching, the target took the flour bags with one hand, hefted them over his shoulder, and rose to his full height in one fluid motion. The man who had previously been behind the counter picked up his white cane and passed it over to his free hand. There was a nod of thanks and some inaudible pleasantries before he left the building.

Kugisaki tucked herself away behind the truck completely and Megumi slowed his breathing alongside all movement. If he didn’t make a sound, he would go unnoticed. The operation could continue without any complications.

Except Itadori was walking towards the target, mouth opening, ready to speak directly to the-

“Hi, nice to meet you, I like your dog,” Itadori said, beaming despite how the smile would be lost on the man. Although it was clear as day to anyone who could hear the joy in his voice that he was.

Together, both man and dog stopped, the swinging cane completing its arc before stilling. “He is adorable, isn’t he?” he said matter-of-factly, “so what’s your name and is there any reason why you stopped me? Or is Pakkun just that cute?”

Outside of the view of the exchange, Kugisaki was silently cursing violently with concerning gestures that Megumi was pretty sure translated to the coming slow and painful demise of Itadori Yuuji.

“Oh! Pakkun! Nice to meet you!” Itadori bent down to the dog before retreating to his full height and addressing the target properly, “My name is Yuuji Itadori and you’re Kashi-san right? Sorry, I don’t know your last name. I just heard you knew the forest really well and me and my friends wanted to go hiking. Know any trails we could take?”

That was… surprisingly smooth. His explanation still didn’t negate the fact that Itadori must have tracked him down while he was on an errand of all things which was a bit strange but the request made sense.

“Sure, I can take you, follow me,” the target said and somehow managed to convey a smile with his genial voice.

What. Well, um, okay then. That was much easier than expected. Perhaps all those bad feelings were unfounded after all, this was going surprisingly well.

Chapter Text

“Do you know of prophecies?”

“Yeah, I don’t think they’re as big of a deal as people say they are. I mean, most of them are self-fulfilling anyway. You tell someone they’ll become a God? Okay! Done!”

“That’s… I wouldn’t call that self-fulfilling.”

“I fulfilled it myself, therefore, self-fulfilling. No?”

“Nevermind. That’s not what I wanted to talk about, there’s a new prophecy. Except, it’s not new.”

“That’s a paradox, it’s either one or the other.”

“It’s ancient, the sealing ink is crumbling with its age. Yet nobody has read it up until now, as though it simply appeared in the archive. Or rather, it allowed us to notice it.”

“Perhaps that was the purpose of the seal, you said it’s deteriorating.”

“Perhaps. Either way, it has the higher-ups in pandemonium - they don’t know what to make of such important information having been imparted upon them so late, who to blame, what to do, what is the state of the balance, and such.”

“Well, what does it say?”

“I’m not sure you’re supposed to know, but you should. Here, I won’t speak it aloud.”

“How did you…”

“It wanted me to, so I took it. And because it doesn’t want to be interfered with, it hasn’t been.”

“Well, that sounds completely ordinary and not at all like bullshit~”

“Just read it.”

“... I don’t like it.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“You’ve already taken us here. Three times,” Nobara said. She was close to tearing her hair out. Which she would never do, her hair care routine entailed eight steps with an additional two on Sundays. She would not risk balding, especially not at her own hands.

But this man? Kashi-San? He might just push her to throw all her time and effort down the drain to relieve the surmounting tension.

Nobara was not an unkind girl. She wasn’t particularly kind either. She conducted herself righteously - those who were asking for it, got what they were asking for and more. Beating up an idiot who insulted her appearance was completely justified as the idiot was so horrifically wrong, the only way to correct him was to clobber his thick skull with the fists of truth.

Beating up a blind man for giving them the wrong directions? Frustrating but, morally, she could not take action. No matter how the sun was setting and her feet hurt from hours of walking.

“Have I?” The man said, and his innocent voice immediately sent guilt stabbing at Nobara’s frustration, puncturing it like a balloon. “I didn’t see the street sign…”

Oh God. She was a terrible person, wasn’t she? Yes, the man lead them around town in impressively convoluted circles for hours upon hours and yes she stank of sweat now and she’d left her travel deodorant in her dorm, but… he couldn’t read the signs. He was just as lost as they were.

Fushiguro, who at some point early on into their journey acquired the pug ‘Pakkun’ as a head ornament and now had another dog with droopy eyes draped across his arms, spoke up. “It’s okay, Kashi-San, we’ll just find our own way.”

“Go into the forest alone? You can’t do that,” Kashi-San said and turned to face them. It was hard to discern emotions from the sliver of skin between the cloth covering his eyes and the face mask, but he sounded concerned. “You’ll go missing.”

“Why would we go missing?” Itadori asked.

“Everybody does. It’s dangerous,” Kashi-San said and began to walk before they could protest. “Let’s go back to the cafe, hm? It’s getting late.”

Nobara’s irritation returned and her eyebrow twitched when Kashi-San lead them to the cafe without a single wrong turn.

Darkness encroached on their torch lights thickly, as though it would consume the little spotlights if they rested on the same spot for too long. There was no halo fade to the light, only that which could be seen and that which could not be seen. Without them, the forest would be a single expanse of black.

“I don’t sense any curses,” Fushiguro said and Nobara turned her torchlight to him. He winced at the light but otherwise didn’t complain. “I keep finding paw prints, though.”

Yeah, Nobara had seen some as well. Mostly little, but the occasional big set made an appearance too. Nothing out of the scope of ordinary animals, however. They didn’t belong to curses.

“The cafe lady said Kashi-San lived here, right? He owns dogs,” she recalled.

There’d been several recurring dogs on their little wild goose chase earlier and she suspected they were his. Each of them carried an odd symbol she hadn’t recognised so she’d sent a picture of the two dogs Fushiguro carried to Gojo Sensei. If he didn’t know the symbol, he’d surely find the dogs cute and then maybe he’d be in a generous mood when they got back to report a mission failure.

“D’you reckon he lives in like a tent? Made of sticks? Something that could blend in. Because I’ve not seen a cottage or anything,” Itadori said and turned his light to Nobara, blinding her briefly. She wasn’t as indifferent to slights as Fushiguro so she swiped at his hand.

“Hey!”

“Don’t shine that in my face.”

“Okay! Okay! But, um, I was gonna ask something,” Itadori lost his sheepish expression and turned to look at the darkness around them. “Don’t you guys get the feeling like we really shouldn’t be here?”

“It’s normal to feel unwanted in a curse’s territory. Especially a strong one,” Fuhsiguro said, “but I know what you mean. This feels different, more… fundamental. Like we shouldn’t exist in the same space as whatever is destroying the reported curses.”

“Maybe that’s why they were destroyed…” Nobara murmured and gave the darkness a once over, stifling a shiver.

“But what about Kashi-San? He’s just some blind guy and he lives here. Apparently. I mean, come on, isn’t it strange that we haven’t found even a campsite?” Itadori opened his mouth to continue his theorising but stopped when a second mouth opened next to his.

All three of them froze. Sukuna seemed indifferent to making physical appearances in front of Nobara and Fushiguro but, when he did, he usually had a reason. Either to take the piss out of them for his own entertainment or to impart oddly valuable advice. And the current situation didn’t seem to call for mean-spirited jokes.

“You idiots are blind,” he said, and perhaps Nobara was wrong. Put a tick mark next to both scenarios because he was managing to insult them while also revealing the key to their mystery. “There’s a massive building right next to you.”

Itadori’s hand struck out suddenly without his command and his palm slapped something solid with a thwack. Both Nobara’s and Fushiguro’s torches flashed over to him, highlighting his shocked face and the concrete wall behind him.

Slowly, Nobara shifted her light and found the grey expanse extended as far as her torch could reveal. How the hell had they missed this?

“This has to be some kind of seal, right?” Nobara said and approached the building. The concrete felt, well, like concrete. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but that feeling that she shouldn’t be here increased when she made contact. An artificial feeling, then. Tied to this building. “We’ve not learnt about seal breaking yet, other than the ones you can use brute force for. I don’t think that’s the case with this one… But…”

She looked to Fushiguro and he nodded. Two wolves jumped from the shadows and collided with the wall to no effect.

“The seal needs to come down first,” he said and patted his dogs before dismissing them. “We should report back at the hotel.”

“Finally, I hate this feeling,” Itadori sighed.

"A seal? That's a little unusual," Ichiji said, a contemplative hand on his chin. "And it was sealing its presence? You're certain it wasn't a seal to keep something inside the building?"

"I mean, I'm not super familiar with seals but it looked like that?" Yuuji said and turned his eyes to the view out the car window. They were at the midpoint where the city glass fronts started to give way to more traditional housing. "Hey, how come you're coming with us this time?"

"I'm familiar with seals. Once we figure out the situation, you may need a veil. You said a man lives in the woods?"

"A blind one," Kugisaki said.

"He has eight pet dogs," Fushiguro added.

"Eight?" Yuuji repeated. He'd only been certain of two, although they'd seen a number around town. He hadn't spent too keen attention on counting them.

"We kept seeing the same eight dogs with the same symbol," Fushiguro clarified.

"Here," Kugisaki shoved her phone between his and Ichiji's front seats (Yuuji called shotgun!). An adorable photo of Fushiguro adorned the screen, Pakkun on his head and a droopy-looking dog in his arms. She double-tapped and zoomed into the loose collar around Pakkun's neck.

"I don't recognise it, it could be anything," Ichiji said and refocused on the road. "You said there was a cafe he worked at? I'm not certain it means anything, but we could at least try to get more information about the forest from him."

Except, when they entered the cafe to the chime of the little welcome bell, somebody else had beat them to it.

"Gojo-sensei…?" Yuuji said and then he yelped “Gojo-Sensei!” and leapt to the side as Gojo darted backwards through the door, two hands held up in surrender.

He was shortly followed by the old lady who ran the cafe brandishing the sleepy dog Fushiguro carried yesterday like a woman of her age might with a handbag. For the most part, the dog seemed indifferent to its careless handling, flopping around in her menacing hold like a rag doll.

“Oh! If I ever see your face again, boy, you’re gonna get it!” She cried out, continuing to advance until a hand appeared on her shoulder.

“Ah, Fumiko-San, you’re so energetic, why don’t we sit down for some tea and forget about my ugly doppelganger before you get all tired out?” Kashi-San emerged from the soft shadows of the cafe. The headband over his eyes was slightly askew and his hair a little ruffled, showing a hint of a metal plate. Squinting, Yuuji tried to make out the etchings and, if he wasn’t mistaken, what little he could see looked an awful lot like the symbol the dogs wore. “Besides, I don’t have the money to bail you out of jail.”

“I’d tear that pretty smirk right off his face,” the lady - Fumiko - nodded but acquiesced, retreating inside the store with one last dirty look for Gojo.

“I know you would,” said Kashi-San, muffled.

With a slam that shuffled the roof tiles, Fumiko closed the door and barred access to their only lead on the forest case.

Four pairs of eyes turned to Gojo, whose apologetic grin transformed into something approaching serious.

“Now, why would a blind man know we look alike?”

Chapter Text

“It’s not like him to send students away,” Fushiguru said and Yuuji nearly jumped.

The car journey back to Jujutsu Tech had been uncharacteristically sober so far. A disquiet followed their abrupt dismissal from the mission and past his and Kugisaki’s initial complaints about missing out on the action, it’d been kind of awkward.

Yuuji liked to think he was a personable guy. He picked up on people’s energies. Particularly if they were negative, like Ijichi’s mood. Although he did his best to pretend otherwise, anxiety rolled off him in waves.

Admittedly, Fushiguru was hard to read. But Yuuji was determined to work his way around his brooding psyche eventually. Kugisaki was similar yet different; he was still trying to dance around her irritation and rule out which buttons he could and couldn’t push. It would come with time.

“He probably figured it was too dangerous when we told him about the hidden building.” Kugisaki shrugged. With her gaze trained on her reflection, she spun a small section of her hair into a tiny braid, undid it, and began the process again, as she had been doing for some time now.

“No.” Yuuji and Kugisaki turned their full attention to Fushiguru. “Gojo-Sensei isn’t joking when he calls himself the strongest. He is fully capable of putting down a special grade while protecting his students. It’s part of his teaching method, so we can see curses of higher grades in action without getting hurt.”

Huh. Yeah, Gojo-Sensei said he could go toe to toe with Sukuna, the king of curses. And he had Fushiguru with him when they first met. Which could only mean…

“Icihiji, why did Gojo-Sensei send us away?” He asked, turning his head to the driver screen.

“... I don’t know,” Icihiji said and tightened his hands on the wheel.

“Clearly you do,” Kugisaki piped up before Yuuji could continue. “Or you have some idea of what’s going on, if not the specifics. You would’ve gotten three speeding tickets already if we passed any police cars.”

“You don’t need to protect us from the truth. Reality is ugly, and we don’t have a choice but to face it as Jujutsu Sorcerers,” Fushiguru delivered the final blow.

“Fine,” Ijichi conceded and the scenery outside the window became clearer as he slowed down some. “He asked me about the symbol in the picture you kids sent. He didn’t tell me outright, but he recognised it, and I know he had an important meeting today and he doesn’t normally leave those that early, but whatever this is takes priority.

“So, he shirks one of his more pressing responsibilities. Okay, Gojo-san is known to do that on occasion. But then he sends you back to Jujutsu Tech without having made any progress on your mission? I don’t want to make any assertions, especially when I don’t have all of the facts, but…”

A short silence fell over the car as the information settled in, accompanied by the Ijichi’s palpable regret for opening his mouth.

“I thought so. Thank you, Ijichi,” Fushiguru said.

Trees generally weren’t where one looked for dogs.

Lost cats? Absolutely. But Satoru had never known dogs to climb trees. Well, what did he know? After all, he was a cat person. Cats were the unequivocal superior option of the ancient division between canine and feline-aligned people.

Cats set their boundaries, maintained some sense of regality despite their adorable capacity for goofy shenanigans, and kept themselves clean. If Satoru reincarnated as an animal, he would definitely choose to be a cat.

Yet a dog was watching his back from a tree. The same dog he recalled seeing on his evening journey from the ryokan to the forest. To be stalked so sufficiently by a dog was uncanny, never mind several - two other dogs he recognised prowled in the vicinity as well.

Unless they weren’t dogs, in which case, he would soon be exorcising them.

The seal work masking the abandoned office block was interesting and unlikely to be curse in make. Curses weren’t known for their intricate ink work, although anything was possible when a sentient bipedal being learnt how to pick up a brush. Besides, the seal work was entirely foreign to anything Satoru had encountered previously, so perhaps it wasn’t the product of a rogue sorcerer.

Curious, he thought as he approached the building’s doorless entrance, that the ‘Kashi’ figure from his students’ informal report hadn’t registered any significant cursed energy.

Upon closer inspection, the dogs didn’t hold up to the same scrutiny, and he picked apart the grey one stood defiantly in his way as a curse with an oddly presenting signature.

“You’re not welcome here,” the dog spoke. Definitely a curse, Satoru delighted. How interesting, a change of pace. For all appearances, it appeared to be a regular cornered dog, if with more clothes. Hackles raised, teeth bared.

“That’s not very nice,” Satoru said and advanced, his steps echoing as he transitioned from dirt floor to concrete. The dog stood its ground, oblivious to the threat it faced. “It doesn’t feel deserved. I mean, I should kill you on the spot. But I won’t, on account of your owner loving you enough to make for a decent bargaining chip.”

It put up a good fight, frankly menacing teeth snapping with audible power. But it was nothing in the face of infinity; the dog might as well have been chewing on air. Satoru picked it up by the scruff of its neck with one hand, poised like one might pick up a bag of dog shit.

Saliva splattered the ground as it went feral in its futility. Gross.

Wisely, the other dogs drew closer but maintained their stealth. Not that it mattered to Satoru’s six-eyes, but he’d let them cower in their false safety for now.

The first three floors of the office block were non-descript, nothing of note. Just a stock abandoned building, a halfway decent breeding ground curses had it become a test of courage site or an urbex hot spot.

As it was, the surrounding forest should have been laden with at least a couple of formidable curses, if not the building. Yet it was cleaned out, presumably by this ‘Kashi’ figure, the sole resident of the forest.

Of course, the apparent mundanity discounted the seals. While Satoru may be immune to whatever machinations Kashi devised for his defences, he wasn’t so certain the dog would come out unscathed. So he left the traps untriggered and mentally noted them for whatever team would work on the post-mission cleanup.

Satoru was feeling a little silly in his initial caution. Thus far, nothing he’d engaged would pose any danger he couldn’t easily contain.

On the fourth floor, his curiosity soured.

Copious amounts of tacky blood exploded from a central point along the floor-to-wall junction. In the epicentre, a vaguely humanoid silhouette carved itself out from the red-brown mess, depicting the slump of an unconscious or dead body. Alone, it was eye-catching.

What lay above it stole the show.

Violent streaks of blood haloed two striking red eyes, three tomoe splattered in each. Between the two, a third eye erupted from the mess with a hypnotising spiral patterning.

He wrinkled his nose and glared at the offending stasis seals keeping the display fresh.

“What’s this supposed to be?” He raised the dog to eye level and thrust it towards the twisted mural. When it didn’t respond, he shook it.

“Nothing good,” the dog spat, its anger a front. It seemed genuinely disturbed by the display, similarly scrunching its nose. When shaken again, it whined: “Kaguya.”

Further inquiry and escalated shaking did not yield any new information. Satoru settled for snapping pictures and sending them Yaga’s way.

On the floor above, he quickly identified Kashi and the curses’ habitation. Judging by the mess, he wasn’t the tidiest of people, but that could be expected from the owner of… six, seven, eight dogs. Even if they were curses, it was reasonable to asert their upkeep was difficult.

Stained windows transformed the slice of moonlight illuminating a third of the room into a curdled shade, casting an unappealing pale yellow over the sparse furniture. Several dog beds, cushions, and sheets strewn about the place, incongruently expensive and well looked after for the most part. The contrasting battered and wilting human furniture looking to have been recently relieved from an abandoned quarry created an odd dichotomy.

Anything that couldn’t be easily hauled by canine mouths was second, third, and possibly fourth hand. Wow! They were little thieves!

In support of his theory, the personal effects littered around the room on windowsills, tables, and kicked into corners looked designer. From obnoxious dog collars to the litany of branded clothes peaking from a bin bag in the corner (none of which matched up to a particular style, you’d have to be blind to pick them out. Or a dog.), it all looked new.

The exception was the cared-for menagerie of knitted clothes hung up in a wardrobe missing one of its doors. Well crafted and handmade, likely the product of that pesky bag of bones at the bakery.

Having taken a peak into the criminal lifestyle of his mission objective, all that was left was to wait.

Swiping dog hairs from the ragged armchair with his free hand, he made himself as comfortable as one could on a torn-up moth-eaten cushion.

The dog resisted Satoru’s manhandling, rejuvenated by the change of circumstance, but his fate was inevitable. Manoeuvred to sit on Satoru’s lap, the mutt had no choice but to endure his theatrical petting. With infinity activated. He wasn’t going to touch an unwashed dog, never mind an unwashed curse dog. It was a little play. The other curses, and eventually, Kashi, comprised his audience.

Ten minutes passed before the first attempt on his life.

The admittedly comforting weight of the dog vanished and red encompassed his immediate vision. Six tomoe, a refined replica of the bloody display downstairs, swam in a crimson sea. Metal pressed against the infinity shielding Satoru’s neck, reflecting the mere inch of space between their faces in steel.

Kashi had replaced the dog in his lap and delivered what would have been a fatal blow, were Satoru anyone else.

Realisation cast those hypnotising eyes wide and Kashi jumped back in a flash, coveting the shadows beyond the moonlit border. Reduced to two glowing eyes, he appeared more curse than human.

Evaluating the cursed energy flooding his senses, Satoru was keen to err on the side of caution on his sorcerer-or-curse assessment.

“Invite a guy to dinner before you pounce on his lap, jeez,” Satoru said and stretched out his arms leisurely.

Kashi made no reaction. His eyes spun, slower now. Assessing. Likely puzzling over his failed assassination and plotting out his next move, and drawing a blank. He should give up now, Satoru’s defence was impenetrable.

“Not much of a talker, I see. More of a silent, brooding type? Ugh, I’ve got no patience for those,” he carried on, irrespective of the tough crowd. With another stretch, he got to his feet and stepped forwards. “I’d say ‘nice place you got here’ but you’d see right through me. This is a dump and we both know it.”

Still, Kashi maintained his statuesque demeanour. Perhaps he had given up, seeing no options and choosing inaction. Logical but boring, as most logical things tended to be. No fun.

Whelp. Satoru could easily delete his existence on the spot, but more pressing matters were at hand. Like bleeding moons, red washing blue, everything and nothing, ya-di-ya-da. All of that prophecy bullshit he’d been forced to reckon with upon spying that foreign spiral-triangle symbol upon both decade-old parchment and a dog’s ridiculous garment.

Desperate times, desperate measures. Except nothing Satoru ever did was desperate, he was too good for that. Too powerful, too pretty, too privileged. Teleporting, grabbing the tree dog, and teleporting back was simply the next methodic course of action.

Crack!

He snapped the curse-pretending-to-be-a-dog’s radius.

An agonised whine erupted from the curse’s throat, raw and uncomfortably dog-like, and Kashi’s form shook with it.

“It’s just a curse, you know,” Satoru said and held the dog demonstrably forward. “By all rights, I should have exorcised all eight of them already. But you’re-”

“Kill my ninken and you will regret the day you were born.”

Satoru blinked. Cold and harsh, Kashi’s words zapped the air and the room flooded with a palpable sense of malice. A death sentence had been issued for Satoru, pending only on Kashi’s ability to deliver.

Empowered by his invulnerability and emboldened by the crack in Kashi’s front, Satoru grinned. “Oh! But you didn’t let me finish! I was going to say: ‘you’re attached to them, so I’m willing to let them live if you answer some questions.’ What a steal of a deal! Right? I mean, I’m practically breaking jujutsu law by not wiping these pathetic mutts from existence. You get far more out of this than I do.”

“Give him to me,” Kashi said, monotone as before but the very environment almost tremored with his disguised rage.

“Why would I do that? He’s my bargaining chip!”

“You can teleport and grab one of my ninken whenever you like and I’m helpless to stop you. So. Give him. To. Me.”

“Alright, alright,” Satoru pouted. He struggled to retain his petulant expression when Kashi nigh imperceptibly flinched at his approach, delight playing at the corners of his lips. “You can have your ugly curse dog.”

With delicate care undeserving of a curse, Kashi cradled the dog and signalled for the large one hiding out in the dark adjoining hallway. Nervously, it lumbered into the room, moonlight catching on the hulking muscles of its shadowed body. With a similar gentleness uncharacteristic of curses, it took its injured brethren and retreated.

“Okay! First question!” Satoru clapped. “What are y…”

The question curled up on his tongue and he swallowed it back down. Upon thinking it over, examining those scarlet eyes and how they’d transformed Kashi’s entire presence upon being revealed, he drew closer to a new conclusion.

“You having a stroke?” Kashi said unkindly but Satoru let the insult wash over him. The prospect of him crawling out of his shell some more to showcase his personality was too tantalising to hurt his mood.

Satoru clapped again. It felt like a good de-tangenting, reorganising motion. “Nope! Just factoring in new information. So what is it, you cursed? Or did you steal those eyes? If I were literally anyone else, I would mistake this whole blindness thing you’ve got going on for a natural-born heavenly restriction. But I happen to be me, and I can see that it’s not. Whatever weird fucked up shit you’ve got going on here sure does a good job of pretending to be normal. So what is it? Option A: Cursed. Or Option B: Stolen.”

Satoru swept his blindfolded gaze around the room, pointedly lingering on the stolen goods.

“C. Neither.”

Huh. “... Okay. What is it then? What’s the elusive third option?”

“They were a gift.”

Hm. Satoru scratched his chin in mimicry of deep thought. He clicked and parodied a ‘eureka’ moment. “Maybe I wasn’t clear enough! I don’t want you to just answer my questions in return for me not killing your little pet curses. I want you to answer my questions truthfully in return for me not killing your little pet curses.”

“I have no motive to lie,” Kashi said and subtly shifted his weight towards the hallway where the big curse tended to the smaller one. Weird how it took so long to heal, but it was repairing itself slowly.

Satoru could understand the inclination to tame curses like shikigami or his… old acquaintance's particular technique. Personally, Satoru’s bloodline didn’t inherit any shikigami, not that he had any use for them. Usually, those curses were powerful and useful in a fight for those who used them.

If anything, these little dog masqueraders could only be a detriment in a battle against anything of significant power. They were weak. So why did Kashi keep them around?

Back to the matter at hand. “I guess so. But I’ve never heard of a gifted cursed technique. Perhaps an object. But a body part? What, did you undergo surgery? That’s-”

“Yes, actually.”

“- The most ridiculous thing I… Oh wow. I guess that’s theoretically possible. Eye transplants are a thing. Cursed eyes are clearly a thing.” He tapped his blindfold and gestured to Kashi’s eyes. “Put two and two together and you get whatever the hell is wrong with you.”

Kashi was human then. A normal, regular human, with regular non-sorcerer, cursed energy levels. Which explained why he snuck up… No. His theory dissolved like candy floss in water.

When Kashi was at the bakery, he possessed regular non-sorcerer levels of cursed energy. When Kashi opened his cursed eyes, he registered as a special grade. Unless Kashi teleported from outside of Satoru’s perimeter of six-eyed sight right into his lap, he could reduce his perceived cursed energy to a negligible amount at will.

Ugh, was Satoru going to be playing interrogator in this musty abandoned dog-fur-infested thieves' den all night?

“Whatever. I don’t care enough to keep doing this, I've got tiramisu waiting for me back at the ryokan. You might not have been born a sorcerer or a curse, but since your… surgery, whenever that was - when was that, exactly? - You’ve become something. And I need to know which it is.”

“And if I’m a curse you’ll ‘exorcise’ me,” Kashi said dryly.

Ehh, perhaps Satoru could have approached this differently. Then again, what did it matter? The higher-ups would not tolerate Kashi’s unquantifiable existence; Satoru could draft up the lectures he’d receive ahead of time if he didn’t bring him in. Especially if they made the same connection with the prophecy as Satoru. At least he had plausible deniability there, nobody besides Yaga knew he’d read it.

Cursed humans were treated like curses if the possession was inseparable, with very few exceptions. Satoru himself had to fight tooth and nail to keep alive the two cases he’d taken under his purview.

Stolen cases were… well, they inevitably closed themselves. Non-sorcerers weren’t compatible with curses, especially when their wills didn’t align. The curse would always win. It was simply a question of whether the non-sorcerer should be put out of their misery earlier in light of the potential havoc they could create along their blazing trail to demise.

A gifted cursed technique? Unchartered waters. Nevertheless, Satoru could predict the outcome. The higher-ups would react as they always did when presented with uncertainty: Kill it! Kill it dead!

Satoru sighed. “At least your pet curses will get a head start while we deal with you.”

Wrong thing to say. Kashi leapt forward, brandishing his strange knife, and Satoru did nothing. He stood still, stance casual, and waited for Kashi to pull up short against infinity.

Iron struck his tongue.

His eyes widened and he stared, unblinking, into Kashi’s red. The tomoe pattern had changed. When did the pattern change? Two, two seconds ago. The pattern changed. It changed. The pattern it-

Blood burst from his lips. Flashbacks to another time when blood choked his lungs and slathered his airways. But the envisioned black hair and scarred smirk didn’t match up. Instead, it was grey hair, splattered by Satoru’s tainted exhalation, and grimly satisfied eyes.

The pattern changed, and so did the rules of Satoru’s world.

Staggering back onto the armchair, Satoru replayed the last minute. Pain the likes he’d only experienced once before tainted his memory, peeling at the edges, forcing the past unto its image.

But he persisted as he remembered how to heal. An important distinction. Satoru could heal now. He couldn’t, then. Now was different from then. Toji was a dead man and Satoru could use reversed curse technique.

Kashi’s initial attack had been a feint. He knew his weapon wouldn’t make contact. Then the pattern in his eyes changed, and Satoru was missing half of his torso.

A hysterical giggle gurgled around the blood clogging his throat. Thank God he hadn’t gone for his head - he’d be, someone would have managed to kill him! Him! Satoru Gojo! Killed! Murdered by, by, fucking “Kashi-kun”, and fed to his freaky little fucking curse dogs.

What the fuck does he do if Kashi does go for the head?

“Truce,” he spat out in tandem with bloody saliva, spittle not quite reaching Kashi’s haggard form. A frown broke through Satoru’s pain-distorted features and he wondered if his hearing was addled, because it sounded like a second voice had spoken alongside him.

If the ambient cursed energy between them wasn’t so staggering, he wouldn’t have noticed it rise beyond the pain of his gaping body stitching itself back together and growing organs anew.

But there was no mistaking the power of a binding bow.

“I won’t try to kill you, and you won’t try to kill me,” Kashi said. Blood dripped from his eyes in mimicry of tears.

Satoru wanted to laugh, but the motion was so achingly raw and painful. What a crude binding vow. An ignorant, clueless, vow. But Satoru was in no state to draft up his own, and he was incredibly interested in not dying right now.

“I accept,” he croaked.

In conjunction with Satoru’s tension, the cursed energy crescendoed and then dissipated in its entirety. He kept his bleary eyes open long enough to watch Kashi swirl out of existence, and then got up to teleport himself to give Shoko the fright of her life.

Chapter Text

Nothing embraced him.

It was absurd to suggest nothingness could be tangible enough to embrace, but the abyssal space of the kamui dimension managed it regardless. An absence so complete and whole it forced nothingness to take a form when contrasted against the visceral reality he’d stepped back from, if only by comparison.

Nothing embraced him and death stood ready to catch him, but he refused its waiting arms. Across dimensions, chakra exhaustion was hell, but he was an old hand at sustaining himself on the most meagre of reserves.

So he collapsed to the floor, and closed his eyes, and counted his breaths, and waited for his energy to return to him.

Fumiko Tanaka had never been one to take in strays.

To say the Tanaka line ended with her, however fitting, would be a bald-faced lie. Duplicates of her Hanko had to measure in the thousands, and she hadn't even been the only F. Tanaka in her grade. But this particular branch of the Tanaka family name had been destined to end the moment she turned thirteen, saw her aunt tear her perineal giving birth, and summarily decided a snot-nosed brat wasn't worth the pain.

"I've not a paternal bone in my body," she continuously claimed throughout her adult life, and not once did her conviction falter. While she knew how to carry a baby safely (always support that dreadfully snappable neck, don't poke the divot in its soft skull) her stance was awkward and strained until she was relieved of the dubious gift of cradling a newborn every cousin liked to bestow her.

However, seventy-three years after her bloodline damning decision, she peeled away long-thought immutable self-truths to reveal new layers hidden from even herself.

Kashi-kun was not a newborn child, but he was a child. Any person who had yet to don their first permanent forehead wrinkles and dig the trenches between their brows was a child to Fumiko. Kashi-kun was a third of Fumiko's age and could be passed for her grandson feasibly given that nobody knew what he looked like to begin with, but she'd always been quite frank with those who asked after her personal life.

No, she did not regret not having kids. No, she was not ashamed of the string of heartbreaks she'd strung from youth to twilight. No, Kashi-kun was not her grandson, but he was hers.

It was hard not to dote on a child so hopelessly lost and confused as Kashi-kun. Especially when said child sat at the end of a long investigation into petty thefts conducted by grubby paws silently repaid with designer knick-knacks and tokens - a story for another time.

Kashi-kun was without blood family and had no intention of returning to them. Fumiko could read between the lines when she asked about his hometown and traditional dialect. His childhood memories were not fond.

So she spun her theories as she sewed together the knitted pattern for Bisuke's cowl. That impetuous double of his who'd sauntered into her bakery with that devil-may-care attitude was most certainly a relative. She'd known from the moment he started asking if she recognised the symbol Kashi-kun's dogs bore. He offered a reason to be booted from her store soon enough when Kashi-kun entered from the kitchen and the man pounced like a snow leopard on its winter hare prey.

Kashi-kun hated rabbits. Fumiko was a doting pseudo-grandmother, but she was also unapologetically sassy. Rabbit puns were plentiful in the bakery and if he wanted her to stop, he could simply tell her why. His excessive secrecy strung his body up tight with tension, it wasn't healthy.

Kashi-kun was easily spooked and made himself scarce shortly after the incident. Fumiko had grown accustomed to his stints of disappearances over the eight months she'd known him. She only allowed herself to worry when a group of definitely-not-cops-we-promise turned up at her door and asked after him.

She gave them nothing, aside from a complementary red bean bun to send them off.

Now summer humidity balmed her liver-spotted skin as she spritzed the bakery window front, wavering on her tiptoes. The whereabouts of her stool were unknown; she'd grown too used to Kashi-kun overcompensating for his stay. Arches of dust framed the display. She tutted; nothing to be done for it except find that damn stool.

"Don't over-extend yourself, Fumiko-san, I could hear your bones creaking from the forest."

Kashi-Kun's haggard reflection smeared across the wet window. Fumiko allowed herself a small smile of relief before whipping around on him with her hands bunched at her hips. "And yet all you do is listen to a poor woman struggle? Whoever raised you forgot to teach you basic manners."

Soberness overtook Kashi-Kun's teasing demeanour - Fumiko had become adept at reading his moods through all those layers, both physical and mental - and he spoke seriously. "That would be me, Fumiko-san."

Fumiko frowned. An uneasiness settled in her stomach at Kashi-Kun's rare show of sincerity, outside of gratitude anyhow. "Let's get you inside with a warm cup of konacha, hm? Then we can have a nice long chat about why I had undercover police in my bakery."

"I don't think they were police, Fumiko-san," Kashi-Kun later said over a steaming cup of Konacha, cradling the small cup close to his chin. He wasn't bothering with the mask farce today, peeling away all kinds of layers. Previously, Fumiko would have praised him for letting down his walls. Now all she could think of was how her brother had said "I love you" verbally for the first time before marching overseas.

"Yakuza?" she ventured. Less than ideal, but what was that saying? Tomorrow's winds will blow tomorrow, or something to that effect. "Has your mysterious past finally caught up to you?"

"I'm too young to have a mysterious past," Kashi-kun rebutted with feigned hurt, a familiar gesture then wilted by the evening's sombre tone. "But I do need to go."

Her stomach stopped sinking. Not because her mood lifted, but because it had reached its final depths. Solemn understanding anchored it to the ocean floor. "Do you have a place to go? Or do you plan on moping around until another old lady picks you up off the street like a wet kitten in a cardboard box?"

"Nope. Wet puppy in a cardboard box, actually," he smiled. His left cheek dimpled, a feature they had in common. If he dyed his hair brown, sorted his posture out, and kept smiling - ah. She must be getting old, seeing ghosts among the living.

"Wet puppy in a cardboard box with a knitted sweater," she corrected and reached over the back of her armchair. Both Bisuke's cowl and a mauve turtle neck for Kashi-kun were draped over the top. "It's not that cheap synthetic stuff they use on the high street, you know, treat it right and it'll last you for life."

She handed over the knitwear and he took them with ever so careful hands. His fingers and palms were ridden with callouses and scars, yet she'd only ever known him to be gentle. A strong hand with a batch of dough, sure, but gentle everywhere else.

"I'll make them last two," he said with uncanny sincerity.

"Impossible." Unless you believe in reincarnation.

Kashi-kun nodded and his eyes smiled a good couple of seconds before his lips caught up. Everything about this boy made her want to sigh. "Hmm, maybe."

They finished their drinks, and he stood one last time before the open door of her bakery, a black cutout blotting out the stars outside. She flicked the lights on and he looked as he always did: on his way back to the forest after staying overlong running some self-imposed errand or other.

Fumiko gave a final sigh. "I won't say my life was dull before you entered it, or that I was particularly lonely without you, because it wouldn't be true. I built my life with my own two hands, and I designed it precisely how I wanted it. But I will miss you, Kashi-Kun."

"That's... the best thing you could have said," Kashi-kun said and lifted a hand to his ever-present bandana. "Let me be the only one to feel any pain from this, alright?"

"Oh, don't be dramatic, Kashi..."

Huh. She could've sworn she was doing something.

The door clicked and she nearly jumped. Gosh, she was getting old - leaving the front door unlocked at this time of night? And the lights! And a customer had left their cane without her noticing. Oh dear, it looked to be a blind person's aid. There was no denying it - her age was catching up to her.

When her hip replacement last year forced her to confront the truth of her old age, she'd drawn up plans to sell the bakery. It wouldn't remain a bakery which left a bitter taste in her mouth, but needs must. She really should get around to signing those papers, they'd been gathering dust for far too long. She'd never been one to procrastinate, which was yet another sign she needed to let go.

Well, if there was one thing to be said for having kids - they could at the very least take over the family business. With the way she'd been acting, one would have thought she had an inheritor in mind. Pfft. Fumiko and children? What an absurd thought.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

If there was a button for killing the people I don't like, I wouldn't be able to press it. But if there was a button for killing the people who don't like me, I wouldn't hesitate.

Pathetic fallacy was a funny thing. Horror loved it. What was more romantic than a chase into the dark of night, rain slashing horizontally, the glare of a headlight catching in the downpour? Zero visibility. A cold numbness of the body to contrast the unrelenting fear of the mind, somehow icier adrenalin running through veins while skin frosted a blue bruised colour. The hot cut of a knife through frozen vertebrae, blood spilling a shocking warm red only to mix into a muddy brown on its path to the drain, to the sewers, to the muck and grime and filth of human excrement.

Living things were all the same in death.

Once, Junpei saw a counsellor. Back when his worldview was a malleable thing and hope was a virtue he still subscribed to. She labelled his depression seasonable. SAD, a fitting acronym. Junpei reckoned you could label any emotion as seasonable; it was hard not to feel like raw garbage in the unforgiving Japanese summer, for instance.

Junpei didn't believe in therapy, but he wasn't one to blindly believe. He gathered evidence for his claims and hypothesised and synthesised results. He was so sure of his view of the world because of his methodology. His life was a chronology of the meaninglessness of suffering, of the randomness of hierarchy. Power went in hand with abuse, but there was no altruistic criterion to determine when power was owed. You had it, or you didn't.

Junpei didn't have power, to no fault of his own. Not good-looking enough, not strong enough, not popular enough - not born well enough. From the moment he entered the world with his genetics and his circumstances, his power was determined. Or his lack thereof, rather.

But Junpei wasn't depressed, so it was a moot point. He was indifferent. The optimal state of mind, as perfect as the human experience could get. The weather didn't follow his whims, and when it snowed too hard or rained too thoroughly, it only extenuated his emotions like anyone else's.

The rain had been rough last week. He hadn't been any more depressed for it.

Now the weather couldn't make up its mind. Torrential rain or sweltering humidity? Or perhaps it was a feedback loop. In this present moment, it chose to burn his pale cheeks ruddy as he detachedly observed his bullies pick on a new powerless target.

Was there solidarity in victimhood?

He watched the trio poke at the white rabbit with whittled-ended sticks. They'd broken its legs at some point, so it lay there in a slump, breathing heavily and twitching pathetically.

Was that him? A maimed rodent hapless to the whims of the sadistic? Were they brethren, brothers in broken arms? Was there supposed to be a metaphor here laid down by some higher power to reality-check him into changing his life? If you carry on down the path of least resistance, you'll lose something far graver than your dignity.

No. Junpei felt nothing for the rabbit. His eyes were dull, cataloguing, tired. Numb. From one pathetic victim to another: I despise you for being weak. For being born.

Hideyoshi sat on the nearby garden wall, whittling a stick sharper by driving it between the cemented grooves. His swinging legs stilled as a dog jumped up on the other side.

It was a small thing, as far as dogs go, and the temptation to switch targets visibly rolled over Hideyoshi's face in the twitch of his grin and squint of his eyes. But then it looked at him with what could only be described as unbridled disgust, if a dog were to be capable of such an ugly, human emotion.

The rabbit's torment had arrested Junpei for a good ten minutes, and he was confident he'd be undetected with his bullies so invested in the suffering of something soft and sweet. But a new sight caught his eyes at the sound of rubber scraping on tarmac.

Oh. Life was a contrived, scripted tragedy.

The homeless blind man approached. 'The' because this was Kawasaki City, Japan. He'd been notable from the moment he arrived and proceeded to just... not sort himself out.

Was there power in choosing powerlessness?

No, but further evidence remained to be seen. Pacifism didn't work on an individual basis, he knew that much from first-hand experience.

The man's cane swung in wide arcs ahead of him while a pair of dogs dived between his legs and jumped over his cane in constant chase. Despite this, the man moved unhindered, his free hand sliding over his phone. A tinny screen reader dolled out a continuous drone, but it was too far away to discern the words just yet.

Hideyoshi picked a chip from the wall and threw it at Katsuo.

Katsuo turned with the beginnings of a righteous scowl, but his face cleared up as he followed Hideyoshi's indicating hand. Junpei would call their communication telepathic if it wasn't for the fact that he could so easily follow their logic from behind a street corner.

Katsuo tapped Shin's shoulder and they let the rabbit writhe unattended as they considered the homeless blind man. While he was an adult at an impressive but slumped height, he also wracked up visible weaknesses like a victim-themed bingo card. And the balls roll out... If you have blind, homeless, and old, you win the grand prize of: getting the shit kicked out of you.

Was there solidarity in victimhood?

No, Junpei-

The man collapsed his stick, and the dogs stood to attention. Two more appeared around a second street corner, and Junpei jumped as another padded past him.

A silence fell over the junction, quiet enough for the summer heat to be heard beneath the rabbit's pants. A heavy atmospheric sickness bore down on them as the bullies subconsciously raised their hackles to match the eerily still dogs.

There was intent in those taut limbs and watchful eyes. Junpei took a step back.

"That poor thing," the man simpered, saccharine sympathy viscous and syrupy, melting sticky and thick in the hot air, sweltering in the canine-footed circle around them. "Leave it alone, it's done nothing wrong."

Something was off. Regardless of whether they could pin down what exactly while Junpei failed, the bullies could also instinctually recognise there was something afoot. They collectively stepped back, as did Junpei.

"Completely innocent," the man intoned, and it tasted like a lie. He drew closer, and the bullies matched him step for step. "Let me look after you."

"You can have it, fucking weirdo," Katsuo spat and kicked the rabbit closer to the man. "Got places to be, anyway."

A lie. Nobody had said a single true thing in this entire exchange.

"Youth these days," the man murmured and his dogs converged on the rabbit while the bullies sauntered off, their swaggering demeanours an obvious effort to mask their uneasiness.
Junpei fought the instinct to turn tail and run. This hadn't played out as it should; the script was right there and left ignored. Everyone else knew their parts, yet this man and his dogs had bowled onto set and left everyone scrambling in disjointed improvisation.

It was Junpei's prerogative to collect evidence, hypothesise, and understand the world. Anomalies must be explained and accounted for.

The man appeared unbothered as the dogs fought amongst themselves over the rabbit. He stood above the rabble with his attention returned to his phone, swiping his finger across the screen.

"Haru: Meet me under the cherry blossom tree. I have something I want to ask you."

He giggled. It was the most unnerving act in the scene so far.

Attention still glued to his phone - was he playing an otome game? It sounded like an otome game. And the accessibility voice was so loud - he pivoted and walked in the opposite direction from Junpei, his dogs having nominated a courier.

The rabbit hung limply from the jaws of the shaggy-looking one. Junpei couldn't ascertain if it was breathing. But it did-

Oh. Swinging upside down, it was hard to see at first. But there was no mistaking it: a third glossy black eye pressed into its forehead.

Junpei followed at a distance, although he was certain those uncanny dogs had seen him. Several had dispersed, leaving the man with a trio in a guard rotation - it was too uniform to be anything else. But they were unbothered by Junpei and he couldn't rightly turn away without getting some answers.

The troop paused at the stark separation between the midday sun and the deep shadow of an underpass. The man didn't look at him, but Junpei felt seen.

The man continued into the dark and Junpei settled by the edge of the entrance, maintaining a facade of stealth if only for lack of any better alternatives.

The courier dog set the rabbit down and backed off.

Junpei crouched, transfixed as the man poised his hand above the still rabbit, fingers streamlined and pointed. His nails barely brushed against the soft white fur, turned grey in the lack of light, surveying the body. Until they settled, hovering above the third eye.

Something tugged the back of Junpei's shirt and he whipped around.

A tired-looking pug released his shirt from its mouth and the cloth stuck against Junpei's back wetly. The pug didn't speak and Junpei spared a moment of incredulity to think on why that had been a consideration at all. It stared at him, somehow knowingly, and Junpei missed whatever squelched and cracked sickeningly in the underpass.

He snapped back around.

The rabbit's forehead was an oozing crater, and its eye cut out a silhouetted sphere perched in the precise fingers of the man.

"I like the phrase: curiosity killed the cat," the man said in a dissonantly cheerful voice and Junpei stood to his full height. Now Junpei was taller than him, as the man remained crouched before his victim. Not to mention Junpei was in light while the man was in shadow. Yet Junpei didn't gain any power from the dynamic. "You shouldn't follow strange men into dark places, kid."

They were disjointed non-sequiturs, but Junpei could read between the lines. "It wasn't curiosity. Don't you know the rules of this world? Somebody like you shouldn't have come out of this like that." Junpei rattled off on autopilot, his psychology streaming directly from his brain, sluicing up his throat and drooling from his mouth. "This is fucked up."

"Quick lesson: Self-preservation. If you see a man rescue an animal only to mutilate it in a dark, secluded place, make like a bunny rabbit and clear out, okay?" The man said and pocketed the eye, dusting off his knees like this was a completely normal activity, and stood up.

"But why?" Junpei asked compulsively.

"Why run? Kid, I'm clearly some kind of deranged psychopath-"

"Why save it just to kill it? It wasn't a mercy kill - you're dissecting it. What's happening here?"

The man paused. Although little could be seen of his face beneath his battered inked medical mask even without the darkness, his confusion was clear.

"What's happening is you're writing a verbal sign-off on your own life. Scram, kid. Seriously - deranged bunny rabbit killing psycho here. Where's your will to live?"

"We're all the same in death."

"... Okay?"

Junpei didn't know what to do. Neither did the man. He made like he was looking about himself for some kind of direction, arms halfway shrugged in bafflement.

"Why'd you do it?" Junpei pressed.

"Because I'm clearly insane. Now, I'm going to leave because whatever half-baked survival instincts you have aren't kicking in when they should. So er- goodbye, and, um, don't do this again."

The man backed away, and solvent shadows slid over his figure, spiralling like a whirlpool. Between one moment and the next, he was gone. As were his dogs.

What. The fuck.

"To recap - the kid looked like an ANBU prodigy on a forced sabbatical. 'Where's your will to live?' What kind of idiotic question is that?" Urushi's voice bounced off the brick sewer walls, which was admonishment enough as each echo emphasised the height of his volume. "... Sorry, Boss."

"Damn right you should be sorry," Akino said, slow and measured and all the more punishing for it. "A: for mouthing off. B: for making a racket. Zip it."

"Also, Boss is blind," Bisuke added with an audible shit-eating grin. "He didn't know what the kid looked like."

Urushi huffed, building up to some defence if only he could locate the words for it beyond his indignation, but Pakkun knocked him down before he could get up.

"Enough squabbling," Pakkun said. "You're not pups fighting over a teat. We're on a mission."

Kakashi hummed. He rarely interjected in his ninken's conversations these days. His leadership gave way to a lot of slack, and it showed in their evolving attitudes. The future could be divined from the looseness of his hold, his metaphorical loose leash, yet he did nothing to reel them back in.

At least the mention of 'mission' had perked up their ears that morning. He could have said 'unlimited dog treats' for the same effect a year ago. A year ago, since a lifestyle supported by theft didn't lend well to the tolerance of indulgence.

A year ago, Urushi wouldn't have dared to speak to him like that.

To be fair, the prospect of progress had torn Kakashi away from his morning ritual of 'find power outlet' and 'play otome games for eight hours'. There hadn't been a slither of progress in months, only for them to find evidence in the very underground network they currently called home base.

Said otome games sat in his phone, burning a hole in his back pocket. Every five minutes, his fingers twitched towards it but, while his muscles didn't know any better beyond recent memory, his mind was on target and he resisted the draw.

His outfit helped frame his mind. While he didn't know what it looked like and all the elements were sourced by paws with little interest in fashion (beyond making a spectacle of him for their amusement and his indifference), he trusted his ninken when they said they'd hunted down something acclimated to stealth. At the very least, it felt stealthy.

Warm tight-knit fabric clung to his form, a thin layer of strong, stretchy under-suit between it and his skin. The top layer looped around his neck and cut two neat ovals on either side to grant extra mobility to his shoulders, consequently revealing his ANBU tattoo not unlike his past uniforms. On his bottom half, he wore his favoured fur-lined leggings topped with loose joggers. He was tempted to cut an opening for his toes in the trainers but acknowledged that he didn't fancy sewage water washing his insoles while his not-chakra refused to play at water walking.

The ensemble was complete with a pair of fingerless gloves, his original hitai-ate, and a black face mask that could be drawn to his hairline if he so wished.

It was no suit of armour, but Kakashi was working on circumventing his physical defence. Not as hard as he should have been, but he was just so - distractible. The guilt couldn't stick. Not until his electricity ran out and the reality outside of his magical electronic box flooded his senses.

Dolled up and thrumming with anticipation, he silently padded through the sewer network. A relay of ninken ran through interconnecting tunnels, spiking their not-chakra at each wrong turn, reconvening and fanning out again.

Bull was a distant flicker stationed at the manhole they'd entered from. Stealth didn't suit his bulk, although he wouldn't have made a hindrance of himself if he'd accompanied them.

Directly ahead, Guruko flared twice, and their entourage stilled. Destination found.

Report, Kakashi signed in rusted ANBU code when Guruko returned.

"The curious boy is there. He's talking to a strange man. There is a big immobile monster," Guruko said, clipped.

O.K, Kakashi signed. Caution. He pointed to himself. Lead. Go.

All seven dogs nodded and fell behind.

Kakashi raised his hitai-ate.

The world struck his vision, racing to squeeze itself into his retina all at once. He crouched, breathed in one rancid breath, two. Blinked, slowly, and adjusted.

His not-chakra lethargically ticked an invisible countdown and he moved quick and low. Sewage heat warmed his exposed skin, but he was accustomed to roving through the dregs of society; he'd first trodden on spilt intestines at age five and thought little of it then.

The tunnel dropped into a cavernous space and the water thinned enough for him to mould his body to the lip. He suppressed a shiver as buried memories of ROOT overlayed the brutalist pipes and raised walkways in pattern recognition.

'A strange man' did indeed lounge on a mesh hammock strung between maintenance pipes, idly swinging. The angle wasn't lucrative, but the man's not-chakra was as thick and oily as any other monster he'd encountered.

The curious boy, who Kakashi identified through a process of elimination, sat at ease on the edge of one raised platform, gazing into his murky reflection. They were chatting to each other, casual as anything, while the call for the process of elimination caught all stray attention.

A naked, undulating thing sat on the right, its laboured breaths heaving its triple-digit width and height body with each exhale. It struggled, fat lips bubbling with saliva, framed by a smattering of ugly black hairs.

Sewage rot didn't tug Kakashi's gag reflex, but that thing and its tragic humanity reached into his throat and nearly brought him to retch.

One of his ninken whimpered, but Kakashi was too busy containing his own reaction to care.

The monster shifted its attention to the tunnel. Not the mis-happen mountain of lard, no, that was twistedly human despite it all. The monster with the scum-grey hair and stitched-up face.
"We have a guest," the monster proclaimed and dropped from his hammock, landing beside the child who looked up - curiously. But also dull. A default curiosity, sparked by little other than some kind of doctrine or prerogative, if Kakashi had to guess.

Urushi wasn't off the mark.

Kakashi peeled himself off the tunnel floor and dried his clothes with a quick wash of hot air. He could accomplish that much with ninjutsu still. Now the grime cemented itself into the fabric and the stench became semi-permanent, but it was a sight better than waterlogged and dripping.

"Ah, apologies, I'm being so rude," Kakashi said lightly and sat down on the lip. "And I'm late to... whatever this is. I would have arrived sooner but this old man collapsed from heat stroke in front of me so I had to help him to the hospital. And then his wife arrived, and it turned out he was supposed to be at his brother's in Osaka - how suspicious! - so she slapped him, of course, but then he fainted and it was a whole thing. I'm here now, though."

The monster gave a quick, delighted clap. "How uninteresting. And here I thought you were spying for that pesky jujutsu sorcerer."

Kakashi grimaced. "There's a sorcerer in town? I'll be leaving soon then."

"Oh?" The monster paused and leaned forward as if the extra inches would provide any more insight with the several-metre distance between them. "Oh. You're... I don't know what you are. Why don't you come down here so I can get a closer look at your soul?"

"I know him," the boy interrupted before Kakashi could react. "I watched him dissect a rabbit a couple days before I met you... I thought he was blind."

Who the hell was this kid? He read as human as can be, but his behaviour was puzzling. He comfortably sat amongst filth conversing with a monster while said monster's victim suffered a tortured existence in the same room.

"A three-eyed white rabbit, by any chance?" the monster asked, and Kakashi jumped down.

The monster wasn't perturbed by Kakashi's quick descent and subsequent cautious approach, and certainly wasn't anywhere near as unsettled as Kakashi as he walked past the gigantic human while keeping his eyes trained ahead. He came to a stop on the platform opposite the monster and boy, a stinking pool of stagnant water dividing them.

The sharingan's focus was so fine he could see the scant space between stitches and skin on the monster's body, and the unnatural composition of his entire ensemble. Ignoring the arbitrary details, Kakashi retrieved a storage scroll and released the nine eyes he'd collected.

"Recognise these?" Kakashi held one eye up for examination, kept fresh by stasis steals, black and glossy with a soft give between his unprotected fingers.

The monster's face split with a grin. "I do. It's my work, although I can't claim full credit."

"And the identity of the other... artist?" Kakashi ventured, although he knew the answer from the sadistic gleam in the monster's eyes. The fox who got the cream.

"I'm starting to think if I brought them your body, I'd be rewarded generously. Still in identifiable condition, of course - but why don't we set that as the parameter for my next experiment? To test the limits of identification. How far can I morph a soul until it loses all recognition? I'll need some cannon fodder first, and a control, before I start on you. But at least you'll be able to observe the process that way before you lose your mind."

"I'm not fond of unsupervised human experimentation." Kakashi undercut the severity of his voice with a shrug. He glanced at the boy who at least seemed mildly... disturbed? No, disturbed was too strong of a descriptor.

"You speak from experience? Is that why you're... the way you are? On a side note: I will be running a side project on your composition before I wreck you completely," the monster grinned and loped to the edge of its platform.

"Yes, you remind me of someone. He and the local ethics board got into a disagreement. I was ordered to assassinate him."

"And were you successful?"

"No. But he was far more formidable than you." Orochimaru still popped into his dreams from time to time. "Also, I was fifteen."

The monster rolled back on his heels. "You count your age? How interesting."

A beat.

The monster lunged.

Kakashi flung himself backwards on instinct, twisting mid-arch to propel himself off the wall and avert a collision. His sharingan shifted and clicked into new patterns like a physical mechanism, echoing in his brain as nerves connected and his body realigned itself with unreality.

The monster crashed into the wall Kakashi just jumped from, and careened right back on track.

Kakashi's eyes widened as the monster moulded its technique onto itself, stretching and twisting something intrinsic to the fabric of its existence. Its arm thrust out threefold, many-fingered hands rapidly crowding Kakashi's vision.

They phased through him. Kakashi still shuddered.

"Oh," the monster pouted, and the climax of their fight petered out awkwardly. Kakashi stood, unsure of what to do with himself, as the monster stepped back and waved a probing hand through his intangible form. "You're like an inversion of Gojo Satoru."

"Buddy of yours?" Kakashi asked, for lack of anything else to do. He just sort of... stood there while the monster prodded and poked through his body.

"The opposite. He'd squish me like a bug, and I'm not afraid to admit that. My technique is transmogrification, and I activate it via contact. Gojo is untouchable. As are you, apparently. But I suspect there's a restriction - why feign blindness above ground?" The monster stopped his physical exam and canted his head. "Let's test a hypothesis." It grinned.

"Let's not." Kakashi glared a literal hole into the monster's abdomen.

Killing monsters was fairly straightforward. They all had different weaknesses, kill switches of sorts if instead of clicking a switch you smashed it beyond repair. But, in most cases, if he cut the centre mass from the body, they died.

This monster was in two pieces. It did not die.

Its decapitated head released an unhinged cackle as limbs poured from its neck in mimicry of blood and it reunited with its legs via a deluge of misbegotten flesh. Kakashi stared and catalogued the display, compartmentalising his horror as he crouched in a battle-ready stance.

"You're 'nothing', aren't you?" It said after retaining its previous form. "Gojo is everything, and you are nothing."

"That's not a very nice thing to say," Kakashi said on autopilot while he scanned the monster for some clue or trick. Head next, he reckoned. It mimicked humans in appearance; the logic might follow.
It dug into its trouser pocket - its grey torso was exposed as Kakashi had done away with its clothing from just below the shoulders to its waistband - and frowned at the two shrivelled dolls it retrieved.

"You destroyed most of my fodder," it explained and then shrugged. "For all you are the strongest's fun-house mirror, I don't believe you have the skill to kill me. Fortunately for you, I won't be aiming to kill either. Disfigure beyond repair? Yeah. But you'll be alive. Aware..." It tilted forward. "... Awake."

It threw the dolls.

Not-Chakra crackled, and the dolls transformed into fleshy amalgamations assuming bastardised human forms, limbs akimbo and extremities stretched. It was hard not to flinch away - long-honed battle instincts from a life without intangibility - and stand as they ineffectually swiped through him.

"The only thing you're hurting here is my mental health," Kakashi said, and let himself shudder under the guise of comedy.

"Experiment One: Stamina. How long can the subject maintain intangibility?" The monster said and Kakashi's train of thought stuttered, although he ensured it didn't manifest physically. "Once upon a time, Gojo couldn't keep up his infinity indefinitely. Or so I'm told - he's been around way longer than me."

He had a couple of options. Use kamui on the monster's head and risk missing its weak point and leaving himself low on not-chakra. Or dance between intangible and palpable in close combat.
That was assuming the aberrations fighting him would also die when the monster died.

He watched as they pawed at him. Some amount of relief washed through him as he realised they weren't alive. That energy was all the monster's and, when cross-referenced against the gigantic horror show on the right, he could confirm they were puppets. Corpse puppets. Ugh.

"I found a mobile port of Umineko yesterday. Do you know how long I've been trying to play Umineko without access to a computer?" Kakashi said and locked eyes with the monster's forehead.

"There's Umineko on mobile?" The curious boy piped up, a little breathless and more than a little disbelieving. The monster broke eye contact as if remembering he existed. To be fair, the boy caught Kakashi off guard as well.

"Exactly," Kakashi said, and the monster snapped back onto him with unerring swiftness. "So I'm going to just..."

Whenever he used kamui, there was always this breath in-between existence and not in which flesh whorled and drove an innate wrongness into his marrow. The monster's face contorted, Kakashi tamped down on a shudder, and then its body stood without direction.

Water dripped. Sewage flowed. The gigantic human heaved.

The body tilted, fell, and hit the ground with an anticlimactic thud.

Kakashi closed his eyes and followed suit. With the time he'd wasted, two kamui were definitely approaching his limit.

Canine bodies broke his fall - just barely. They jumped down and supported him to the point he didn't crack his skull open, but they didn't save his coccyx from smacking against stone.
He spared a glance at the curious boy before surrendering to blindness. The boy stood on the opposite platform with an uncomprehending look on his face, wringing his hands.

"... You've ruined everything," the boy said in a dull voice, much closer. The pack surrounded Kakashi in loose protection. "You've ruined everything."

"It's a skill." Kakashi waved a limp hand in dismissal.

"He was going to give me power," the boy said and emotion began to bleed into his tone. There was a fleshy thud and the drag of a dead weight. "For once in my goddamn life, I wasn't going to be a fucking victim."

Right. Kakashi was too tired to deal with... whatever this was. A psychotic break? A villain origin story? A final declaration? Post-ANBU mission personnel fallouts had been the worst, and this was unearthing long-buried teenage memories of witnessing shinobi fall apart without a clue of what to do other than stare.

The boy timed his words with his paces. Never a good sign. "My life is a chronology of the arbitrary meaninglessness of the pain and suffering those with power for no altruistic reason inflict on any and all who fall beneath their soles in the hierarchy of circumstance. There is no means for me to gain power without some kind of divine intervention. I am destined to cower beneath the boots of those bigger and meaner than me. Forced to eat bugs, give up my money, endure beat downs."

The steps picked up in pace. Kakashi's dogs tightened their defence. Cloying remembrance crawled in the folds of his brain. Sakura once parroted Lady Tsunade in the way enthusiastic students liked to share learned knowledge - a foreign phenomenon until Kakashi spent more time around Maito's students - on how the human brain didn't stop developing until age twenty-five and how experiences throughout childhood could irreversibly affect its development.

"It's a dog-eat-dog world and I am a three-eyed white rabbit. But I had a chance. I won't fool myself into thinking this is divine intervention - God didn't intend for that abomination," the pacing paused, fabric rustled, and Kakashi imagined the boy aggressively pointing to the tortured human.

When Kakashi was fifteen, a 'no-witnesses' clause led to the avertable collateral of a civilian family. His interim captain was robotic in his execution and took the deed, the blame, upon himself. His stoic shoulders shook apart with the removal of his mask and he'd laughed.

"God doesn't exist. But I was going to be strong, and I was going to eat them."

He hadn't thought about emu-san since, only fleetingly when his mask changed hands. But the crackle in the boy's voice, his echoing footfalls, the sound of his fists clenching and unclenching hair - echoic memory, Yamanaka-san once said.

"Your bullies?" Kakashi asked to reign in his mind from the dark winding paths of half-familiar memories.

"What?" The boy stopped. He'd gotten caught up in himself. Kakashi suspected he hadn't been looking for intervention.

"You want to eat your bullies?"

Pakkun huffed warningly.

"I... no, it's an expression. Well, no, it was a reference to the dog eat- it doesn't matter! Just, nobody would touch me anymore if I showed them what I could do."

"... Okay," Kakashi said and pretended he wasn't using feigned deep thought to scramble for any kind of answer. "I can understand that, they don't sound nice."

Kakashi had killed for less. Not on a personal motivation scale, but sometimes he wasn't even paid for missions during the chronic mismanagement of admin post-war. At least there was gratification in killing your enemies. Or there should be. Kakashi mostly experienced a hollow sort of scraped-out feeling after self-imposed hits and didn't prescribe them often.

While wrapped up in his head, a pointed silence had fallen over them. "You're insane." The boy said and Kakashi was honestly affronted because - seriously? "That's really not what you're supposed to say here."

The first day I had my students, one of them declared their greatest dream was to murder his brother. He was twelve. He then tried to kill me at fifteen, while cooing about how much he'd been looking forward to doing so. I learnt how to kill before I knew the definition for the word 'murder'. I indirectly started the great shinobi war by accidentally killing my childhood friend's crush - It's a family tradition. I have said friend's eyes in my skull. I am functionally blind due to said eyes. I was so good at killing people at fourteen, I was put in charge of the training of other child soldiers. The second I am without duty, I shamelessly and wholly sink myself into my indulgences. I have no reference for what is normal and what I'm supposed to say or do.

"You remind me of my student," Kakashi said, to summarise.

"Was your student relentlessly bullied and humiliated for existing?"

"No - but now that you mention it, that fits the bill for another student of mine."

"What the-" The boy stopped. "No. I'm focusing on the wrong details. You're a teacher. And you're... you're like Mahito. Mahito said otherwise, but it's all the same when you strip away the superfluous details. You have supernatural power, and you killed Mahito. There's no way you taught something as mundane as maths or biology."

Flashbacks to teaching Tenzo about mortgages came to a stuttering stop as the implications sunk in. Oh no. He knew where this was going. "Before you go any further-"

"Teach me."

"- I was paid."

"You owe me."

Oh, this kid. This kid was impossible. "I really don't."

How he wished he was tucked away and playing Umineko right now. He just needed to softly reject this kid in a way that didn't lead to poor decisions, find a power outlet- ah. Right. It was evening, which meant no food court power outlet to linger by.

One of these days he'd sacrifice his non-existent paper trail to stay in a twenty-four-hour internet cafe-

Instinct stalled all thoughts.

"Boss." Pakkun said at the same time the boy inhaled sharply.

Kakashi tensed. He flipped up his hitai-ate.

Tripedal, extending his neck like a snapping turtle, Mahito reached for the boy.