Beta by H_girl69, thanks thanks thanks.

Party time! So more warning for this one… Warning: mention (and not just mentions) of drug and alcohol, drug and alcohol use, sexual situation … must have forget some.

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I had the ‘nightmare’ for the third night in a row, every night from Tuesday to Thursday. Why couldn’t I pass a night without having it, the answer to that question was beyond my abilities. I may be a genius, but I’m not God. What is for sure is that in addition to  genius, I’m a total moron doubly so  by being a masochist.

It’s the only adjective I can find to qualify a guy who, instead of going to Rin’s place where he’ll be able to sleep peacefully as he promised himself, sleeps at his place to undergo a brutally interrupted night for the fourth time.

Friday morning, the fourth night – or rather the fourth morning in a row, I woke up ready to puke my guts out, only to run to try and catch a bus that didn’t give a damn if I was late to my stop or not. Crappy day.

I caught up on some sleep in classes, even though I knew I could do without it until evening – it didn’t raise any question from the teachers… heh, that was the good side of being a genius. From the students, on the other hand, it drew some “whispered” comments that I could have done without, thank you, as well as some sidelong glances which could have used some work on the discretion part… I noticed that Umino glanced more than once toward me during the day. I noticed that I still hadn’t paid attention to his first name.

Zabuza kept sending me worried glances too. I told him exactly what I thought about him doing so, without even trying to be nice, when he asked me, for the third time in as many days, if I would be up for tonight.

In the end it was decided that they would pick me up at my place around nine. This way, we hoped that most people wouldn’t be in a state anymore to notice three more people coming and getting lost in the Mitarashis’ residence.

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I was waiting, sitting in front of my door at well past nine, when  Zabuza and Haku finally decided to show up. A cold breeze had risen with the sunset three to four hours earlier, and the sweat-shirt I had decided to wear wasn’t exactly enough to protect me from the chill.

My street looked… well, deserted. There already weren’t a lot of people around in the daytime. Now that it was evening, the houses had their shutters closed; the cars were back in their garages, the lamp posts were standing at attention. The light from Downtown couldn’t be seen from here, and the sounds from the traffic couldn’t be heard from here either.

A winded chug-chug crossed the silent night. I got up, refraining from snorting before the sound announcing a well-known machine. A car with an indefinable color under the orange public light appeared at the beginning of the street, passed the sleeping houses and finally stopped in front of me. A less-than-happy Zabuza was behind the wheel, Haku was saluting me with a big smile from the passenger seat.
I opened the door, sliding in the back seat of the blissfully warmed vehicle, grinning. I should stop doing so one day, it’s absolutely useless, no-one ever saw more than a quarter of my face and my mouth isn’t in that quarter.

“Tell me, how much did Genma had to pay you for you to take his piece of junk?”

Zabuza started the car again, leaving the sleeping part of the city to take the main streets, before answering me half-grumbling.

“You’re peachier than this morning… Raidou didn’t let me borrow his car, said he needed it.”

“I thought you had a car though?”

Haku entered the discussion at this point, while digging into the backpack.

“Yeah, it’s mine actually, and she’s in need of repair… some idiotic guy who wasn’t able to see the light was red… Here,” he said, turning toward me and holding a thing looking like an earpiece. “Two-way transmitter, these three here are tuned to be linked only between them.”

The car was leaving Konoha behind to enter one of the more upper-class residential districts. The areas we drove past were growing bigger and bigger, and the houses in were becoming larger and more stately and guarded.

“What’s the mission plan?” asked Zabuza between glances from the brightly lighted road to a scrap of paper covered with what looked like my sensei’s hand scribbling.

I digested his question for a few seconds – as the senior active here; I had the command. “The main objective is finding as much information as possible; so the main targets are the office or offices, and every other place susceptible of hiding dirty information, bedrooms, library… you know where to look.”

The two ninja under my command simply nodded.

“Then… keep an ear out for anything that may be said, we never know. And keep an eye open for video cameras, guards, that kind of stuff – Old man Mitarashi is paranoid; we never know what he may have put in his corridors. I suggest we plan to call it a night at 0030 for now, which may be adaptable based on the circumstances.”

The two ninja nodded once more, and we adjusted our watches, making sure that everyone has his phone too – there was no such thing as being too cautious.

Zabuza turned and turned again in the large streets lined by massive residences half-plunged in darkness, before pulling out between the two pillars of an opened portal – I noticed the guy sitting in a sort of box on the side, who watched us entering without seeing us.

The… manor, in lack of a better term, was located at the other side of the path; or was it a drive? Anyway, said path was covered by cars, not all in the best of shapes, many improved-looking, even illegally improved just by seeing the coachwork, each sporting a Konoha registration.
Zabuza parked a few meters away from the wide open portal, as a safety measure, and also because it was the last free place to park. We all three got out of Genma’s car. Beginning of the mission: 2158. I wouldn’t have thought Anko lived so far away from downtown Konoha.

Zabuza stretched out and sneaked an arm around a shivering Haku. Your servant contented himself by crossing his arms. As we were walking toward the house’s entrance, I was attentively studying the place; and I knew the couple which was walking a bit ahead of me was doing likewise.

No dogs, no guards beside the bored one at the portal, video camera just at the portal too for now. Nothing insurmountable.

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About five meters from the door, worthy of a cathedral, the sound assaulted us. More than sound, it was rather the very very low basses, to the point to be felt rather than heard, of the music which was obviously blasting inside.

“Well,” I said, “I’m gonna try to find Asuma and Kurenai. Let’s go.”

Haku’s eyes were shining as much as his earrings when we crossed the last meters to the door, and opened it. Ouch. The expression “sound barrier” had just become real. Haku stepped in immediately, apparently delighted, dragging behind him Zabuza. Each one headed in his direction –each one knew what he had to do. I concerned myself no more for the time being with my teammates; Haku in a party was just like a fish was in water, it was his element.

I closed the door behind me. The music seemed to saturate the air; it took me a few seconds to get use to the volume.

There were people  everywhere, mostly young; at a rough guess, everyone here was between 16 and 25. There were couples in the stairs, in the entrance, with bottles, without, with cancer sticks, with dance partners, yelling, dancing, smoking, kissing.

I walked toward where the source of the music sounded likely to be, crossing what must be in normal times a huge living room, now a crowed place. What seemed to be the whole Konoha high school and campus population was gathered here, bumping one into the other in what could pass for a trance.

We arrived just at the right time. Most people here were already well on their way down the ‘get plastered’ path, and what was going on around them held little interest . Or if they had any interest, by tomorrow they would have forgotten what happened.

There was a girl dancing on a table, wearing only a tiny swimsuit. Except for the  fact that the outdoor temperature wasn’t exactly lending itself to  wearing a bikini, the view was kinda nice. There were guys looking so smashed that they had to be standing up by the intervention of the Holy Spirit. The air stank of sweat, alcohol, tobacco and cannabis – there was certainly more things to smell, like the hookahs in a corner or the mostly empty bottles littering the floor, between the moving bodies.

The source of the music was a real sound system installed on the other side to the room – the music, after my eardrums had adapted to it, sounded like a jazz tune produced under LSD, crossed with a possessed electric guitar and Thor himself’s hammer. Good mix.
I spotted Asuma and Kurenai in a corner, and I headed toward them before they got a chance to spot me.

“Kakashi!” said Kurenai when she noticed me, twenty centimeters from her. Tipsy was too generous to qualify her, but it was still too early in the evening to use downright drunk. She was ‘merry’. Asuma was globally in the same state, even if it was less visible.

“Zabuza’s here too?” The music was forcing her to scream in my ear. I yelled in answer.

“Yeah, we just arrived.”

“Drank yet?”

As I showed that, no, I haven’t drank yet, Kurenai forced a glass with an unidentifiable content into my hands; I couldn’t do anything else other than accept. I drank some, a crowd movement spilling the rest onto my clothes. Now, if someone was caching me where I wasn’t supposed to be, I could always play the part of the smashed guy; my clothes stank enough of alcohol for me to be credible.

I left the couple a few minutes after that, leaving the room where it seemed that all persons present in the ‘castle’ had gathered.

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I was wrong. There were people everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I  really meant everywhere.

First bathroom with a door wide open: couple.

Kitchen: drinking contest with participants ready to roll under the table. Those who were cheering them on weren’t in a better state.
The stairs were half converted into a sleeping place,  the other half  a place to sit and chat. I carefully slalomed between the clusters of people trying to chat above the music; but the music was still to loud to hear each other if one wasn’t screaming.

Second floor’s corridors were deserted; not the rooms. I caught glimpse, well without trying to, of savant plays of legs. I tried to explore the whole floor, finding neither video cameras nor rooms susceptible to contain what we were looking for. From what I could hear in the earpiece, one of the other two was still on the first floor – the music I could hear was as loud as in the room, when the music was muffled where I was.

I wandered around the whole floor, and was ready to go for the next one as I went back to my starting point, the mezzanine above the front door, when a well-known figure passed the door.

Itachi.

You would have thought he was stepping directly out from a yakuza movie, if not from the real yakuza. Black suit, black tie, white shirt, shoes shining as much as his hair. The almost-blue skinned guy from my class going to welcoming him to the door did nothing to lift the impression. You would have thought he was greeting the Godfather himself.

I glanced to my watch. 2303.

Surprisingly, Itachi didn’t head toward the music, but began to climb the stairs, followed by his faithful companion. I hid, flatting myself against a wall. A girl with dyed hair, --violet couldn’t be their natural color—appeared and flung her arms around Itachi. I could perfectly hear them from where I was.

“Itachi,” she purred, “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come… What delayed you?”

“One of my stupid cousins decided to die three years ago today… My family absolutely wanted to celebrate the event properly. They disgust me.”

“Oh… what was the name of the cousin that made you late?”

The trio was climbing to the third floor, and their voices were beginning to move away. I nearly failed to hear the answer he gave to the girl.

“…Obito.”

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My mind went blank.

I couldn’t think of anything. Everything was blank, totally empty, hollow. There was just a big void, a big nothingness that was filling me from the inside.

I think I slipped against the wall, since I found myself sitting on the floor, my back against the wall.

My hands were shaking. It’s with a trembling hand that I activated the transmitter.

“Go on without me. I‘ll be outside.”

My voice sounded alien to me.

I hadn’t heard if there had been answers. I must have passed the stairs, then the rooms on autopilot, to end outside on a terrace a few meters away from the front door.

There was nothing on my mind. It was just a big blank void. I wasn’t feeling anything.

The taste of bile in the back of my throat brought me back to reality. I leaned with a hand, against the wall, holding this body I wasn’t controlling anymore. All I’ve eaten during the day, not enough anyway, ended its course on the flagged ground of the terrace.

Just one thought made its appearance, turning and turning again in my mind, pirouetting, yelling at the top of its voice between my skull’s bones.

… I forgot him I forgot him I forgot him I forgot him I FORGOT HIM I forgot him I forgot him iforgotiforgot I forgot him…

Guilt. The warm liquid sliding on my cheeks was that, my guilt made tears, the very guilt which was eating me alive.

I don’t know how long it lasted. Too long. Not enough. Just a second. An eternity.

I wiped away my tears with a corner of my sleeve, and I walked away from my mess. No-one was on the porch, so I sat there.

A brown bottle, with a beer label on, appeared in front of my eyes. I sat up straight, cursing myself for  letting me be surprised – being surprised was just like signing my death warrant… the training fought to take back control, to put my feelings back in their box; his memory swept everything away. He had insisted so much for me to act at least like a normal kid, for lack of being one…

The owner of the hand holding out the bottle spoke up, interpreting my silence as an interrogation of the content of the bottle.

“It’s just water. I wasn’t going to give you alcohol after puking.”

I took the bottle with still trembling hands, and drank a bit, just enough to rinse my mouth. The water had a bitter after-taste of brown beer. The other sat next to me on the steps, another bottle in hand. It was Umino.

I spat the mouthful of water on the ground, and took another one before speaking.

“…thanks.” It still wasn’t sounding like my voice, but if Umino noticed that, he didn’t say anything.

He sniffed the air, wrinkling a bit his nose doing so.

“Didn’t you drink?”

It wasn’t really a question. Only my sweat-shirt stank of alcohol, and he was close enough to me to notice it. I answered anyway, swallowing another mouthful of liquid. “Not enough.”

“Me neither,” he said, and he throw his head back trying to drink the whole content of his bottle. It was already empty. “Fuck.”

A too loud, too shrill, too close, voice resounded. Umino tried to get invisible by shrinking himself. I closed my eyes under the sonorous insult.

“ ‘Ruka-aa! My little dolphin where are you? I-RU-KA-A?” Some insults and choice words followed, about outdoor temperature and dolphins in general, before we heard the slamming of a door. Umino sighed.

“Thanks almighty she’s as blind as a bat without her glasses…”

“It’s Iruka your name…”

The glare he shot me was dark…“One joke about my name, just one…”… and the tone was definitely threatening.

“Hey, mine is Kakashi, you think it’s better?”

Iruka shrugged a half shoulder. He had to have drunk a few beers to be so carefree looking; unless he hated high school and was doing his best to pass unnoticed there, much like a certain someone.

I closed my eyes again. I was totally… I didn’t know. I wasn’t myself, that was for sure. I wasn’t at all. Even if I knew my appearance to an outsider’s eye was rigorously the same as usual.

“Fuck,” was muttering Iruka for himself, “too cold.” His breath was creating little clouds of white vapor.

I realized I was creating clouds too. Temperature had severely dropped while I was waiting for Haku and Zabuza to pick me up.

“You’re not going in again?”

“I’d rather avoid it… I’m not really into leeches…” He was apparently referring to the girl from earlier. “I’d happily got back home, but the guys I came with are totally wasted. Morons…”

He crossed his arms in a weak attempt at warming himself up, more clouds coming out with every breath he took. His cheeks were becoming red from the cold, not anymore from the excitement as at the beginning. He must have danced. There were still stray sweat drops on his forehead, and his tee-shirt seemed damp in some places.

“Here.” I held my jacket out to him. He looked at me without understanding. “Slip that on before you freeze. You’ll give it back to me Monday.”
The red on his cheeks seemed to increase, was it the effect of the cold? He took the jacket and slid it on though.

“Thanks.”

I glanced at my watch. 0001.

A noise of steps came from behind us.

“Kakashi?”

It was Haku. I raised a hand to show I had heard him. He stepped closer, crouched, his skirt exposing a tiny part of skin between the material and his boots. “You’re okay?”

I smiled, putting the usual mask on my face. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

He smiled back, even if it was obvious he wasn’t really convinced. He noticed Iruka, who was watching us on the side.

“Hey, hi, I’m Haku.”

“Iruka,” he nodded.

Another noise of steps came, but heavier ones. Zabuza.

“It’s beginning to get bad inside – we may as well get away from here before the cops decide to show up.”

I nodded while standing up, and then I turned toward Iruka, still sitting, still with my jacket on.

“Need a ride?”

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The return trip was rather pleasant. Iruka and Haku had claimed the back seats, and were making small talk about everything. It was soothing.

I spoke up only once, to ask to Iruka where he wanted to be dropped. He gave the name of a street half-way to Haku and Zabuza’s place, but totally on the other side of mine.

Zabuza raised an eyebrow in my direction then frowned when I told him I would drop here too. But he didn’t say anything.

I should have wanted to know if they had found anything. I should have wanted to know what was going on inside for Zabuza to ask for retreat. All that was somewhere outside me. The refrain of “I forgot him” was digging a hole in my head.

Streets were mostly desert at this time. Zabuza stopped at the street’s corner indicated, where Iruka and me got off. I waited for Iruka to move a bit away from the car, enough for him not to hear and see what I was giving back to Zabuza – namely the transmitter.

“Don’t wait for me to give your report guys.”

Zabuza nodded, not asking anything. Haku looked at me with a concerned look. Then Zabuza rolled up the window, and they left the street in a backfire of dying engine in the silent streets. Iruka was going through all his pockets behind me, before brandishing a pen triumphantly.

“Give me your address,” he told me, “I’ll bring back your jacket tomorrow.”

I slowly nodded. “165 Ookami lane.”

“Isn’t that behind the old temple and the park?”

I nodded again. I watched him trying to write on his arm in the little light coming from the old lampposts. He pocketed back the pen, and smiled at me. I caught myself smiling in response.

“So…See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

Then he left.

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From where Zabuza had dropped us to the anonymous building, it was a short ninja step.

Rin hadn’t rolled down the shutters of her window. A blue light of screen was coming from it. I climbed up the wall, stopping at the level of her place. She was sitting on her bed, her head on her knees drawn to her chest; the TV in front was playing a too bright western. It was a spaghetti western. It had been his favorite movies. Rin and I had never stopped to make fun of him about that.

I pushed the window open, and she turned her head. Her eyes were red.

I put my feet on the floor. I didn’t dare to take my eyes off her, and at the same time everything was becoming blurry in front of me.

“Rin…”

I sniffed, taking a step toward the bed, stopping.

“I had forgotten him…”

My voice broke on the last word. Rin didn’t say anything; she just opened her arms to me.

She rocked me for a long time, while I was crying like a child, like the child I had never been. I was crying out my guilt from having forgot, crying over the friend, the brother I had lost. She rocked herself, silently crying the man she had loved.

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So thanks again to H_girl69 for betaing this

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