A shinobi is a high school student like another - 26

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"I need some sleep... I can't go on like this"   Eels, 'I need some sleep'

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I woke up to the sound of my phone yelling a few meters away from me. I don't know when I had fell asleep - it was more plausible that I had half passed out on the couch. No idea of what time it could be; the bleak light filtring through the blinds wasn't helping any.

The phone stopped, and the noise seemed to echo in the silence of the house. I sat up, my hands dangling between my knees and my eye staring at the cold wooden floor between my tired shoes. Not a sound outside.

The feeling of void at the bottom, far away, had mixed itself to this thing which tasted like fear in my stomach. The night hadn't helped. I was feeling like I could shatter my body like a empty and too heavy shell just by pushing too hard.

My phone made a 'biip'. Stopped. Made a 'biip' again. Stopped.

I reached to grab my bag. I grabbed one end, and all the contents not kept in by the open zipper slipped out to spread on the floor with a clatter. The phone slided to stop against my foot, the little screen of a bright blue spitting the time at me. 1135 you dumbass. Then the little screen darkened his avenging halo to go back at being only a little black screen - before a new 'biip' brought the infernal machine back to life. I waited without realizing it another blue resurrection to pick it up.

The message that had woken me up was short and to the point. I felt bad to have waited to listen to it and to reply.

"<Kakashi>", said Sensei's voice, tired in the 'I stayed up all night but sleep will have to wait 'cause I'm needed' kinda way, "<Call me back as soon as possible.>

It felt like staying the night up coordinating teams, staying the night up waiting for reports, lives at the other end of the mic, behind screens suddenly turned black. Sensei picked up at the first ring, and his first words made me put all the emotions and events of the last ten hours or so aside. I should have done my report at once, whispered the ninja-tool under the surface.

"<Kakashi, status.>"

"In one piece and at my place, Sensei - what's...?"

"<No time. Be at the HQ asap>" And he hung up on this.

I was in the bus before I realized it - the same clothes as yesterday on my back and tired mug between hat and jacket's collar. The streets zipped by in an artistic hazy grey. And no, no, I wasn't thinking about yesterday.

I was thinking about yesterday.

Shit.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. That was the worst case scenario, what you think about but never happens no matter what. That had been beyond worse. And now... what was I supposed to do? The part of my brain that could form coherent thoughts was clearly saying that, one, I had blown my private life to hell - my sex life too, don't be afraid of the naked truth -, I had lost Iruka's trust, his friendship too, and I didn't need a shadow of a doubt to say it ; two, I had blown my mission to hell, and I knew I had blown it beyond all attempts to fix it. Iruka would refuse to listen to another nin, whoever it was; he would probably refuse to even see him or her. That was leaving him totally vulnerable to an attempt of 'recruitment' by Otsuka, and I was avoiding thinking about what would happen then. I hoped Sensei had bypassed my asking of yesterday and had put me around the pub - around the pub but well hidden, we didn't needed the europeans to fall on our back too for something like a pseudo-territorial invasion.

I was trying not to think at all, because the only reaction the part of my brain that wasn't forming coherent thoughts but feeling was yelling. Given that I was in the middle of a bus, surrounded by little old ladies with flowered bags, it was far from a stellar idea.

What was mainly giving me the urge to yell was that the accusations he had thrown in my face were right - if one had only one half of the info.
Would have kept on lying to him a better way? wailed a little voice in a corner. Said little voice I promptly crushed down, 'cause it had nothing to do here, 'cause I had promised to tell the truth. Because Iruka deserved better than more lies. The feeling at the bottom of my stomach came back with a vengeance, hard enough to make me grind my teeth to the point of pain. The closest old lady with a flowered bag glanced at me and changed seat.

So I put everything neatly aside, put my best mask on my face and stopped two streets before the HQ.

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The HQ was just like it always was - the offices bustling with activity, the low sound of bodies hitting the tatami mats from the training rooms' corridors, the furious clicking of keyboards and crumpled papers left and right. It didn't kept me, though, to notice like blanks in the offices, like absences; and then those absences weren't just in the offices anymore.

I knocked on Sensei's door.

He wasn't in his office - but he had left a message for me, asking me to be in full uniform and at the meeting rooms level as soon as possible.
Something was wrong. Something was really wrong if he needed me even if I hadn't been cleared out for duty by Tsunade.

I turned back, and nearly collided with Haku in his red dress who was busting out of the Info. He avoided me with a step aside, grabbed my arm and dragged me further in the corridors to a quieter place. The frowning looks complete with dark circle under his eyes didn't suit him at all.

"Just so you know, there's a team posted around the pub."

He looked like he had stayed up all night - night shift at the bar probably. I stayed silent, just long enough for it to become uncomfortable, and then I nodded.

"Thanks."

His voice caught me as I was leaving the way I had came by.

"What did he told you that shook you to the point I did the report for you?"

It wasn't an accusation, a judgement, just a question, his voice perfectly neutral. I didn't turn my head to look at him. And the void at the bottom of my stomach mistook itself for a black hole, swallowing me from the inside.

"He was right to accuse me."

And then my footsteps got lost in the noises of the main corridor.

There were new pictures, drawings and lists on the wall, just when you walked in to the lockers and training rooms. It had only been what? Two weeks, three at the most, since I had last stepped foot here. The locker rooms were empty. It wasn't helping any with the feeling I had that something was wrong.

Shrugging on the new uniform that had been waiting for me took more time than expected. I gritted my teeth, trying not to think about the hundred of catastrophic turns of events that could explain this feeling of wrongness, and trying not to undo my bandages more than they already were. I threw my stuff in the locker. My phone escaped again, sliding to my feet. I picked it up - and spend the next two minutes staring at "Iruka" in the contacts list. The phone found itself roughly put back in my bag.

There was a new mask in the locker too, the perfect clone of my old one - and someone had added an old-style bandana, the metal band unpolished and slightly painted in order not to catch the light. The old Konoha symbol was barely readable, but the darkened lines of the leaf and the knife were staring up at me. Obito had had one like this.

I hesitated less than a second before tying it around my head, hiding what was left of my head between uniform collar and mask.
My duty was first and foremost toward Konoha.

The void filling me from the inside screamed.

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Sensei was just stepping out of an apparently agitated meeting room when I got to this level - he made a 'follow me' sign, and I  did so at once.

"Sensei..." I began once in the lift. He rose a hand, and I immediately shut it.

"You're not back to active duty, but I need you."

I nodded briefly. Sensei visibly swallowed before speaking again.

"Are you well enough to be able to use the Sharingan?"

It was my turn to swallow uncomfortably. I nodded and answered yes. Yes, I could use it - no need to linger on the amount of time I could use it, nor my state after having used it. If Sensei asked, then he need it, end of the conversation.

Sensei nodded in return, and he didn't spoke again until the doors opened - he got out and I followed him like his shadow. I dared speak as he had his hand on the door knob - we were now at the 'public' level of our meeting rooms, where we could have almost anyone without them getting glimpse of our real activities.

"Sensei, about yesterday..."

He cut me by raising the hand that wasn't busy with the door.

"I'm afraid I have to ask you to try again - Haku's report was clear on this point."

I blinked. The right word to qualify this situation was 'set up'. A tiny part of my mind laughed hysterically while thanking Haku. The void moved, inside.

And then Sensei opened the door.

Carrot Top, more known under the name of Agent Reno Mattura, was laying in one of the armchairs, his feet propped up on the table. Vincent was in one shadowed corner, his arms crossed and his eyes alert. There were rest of sandwiches on the table, a bottle of water, some glasses. And Uchiha Itachi, pacing up and down the length of the table, stopped as we stepped in.

"Mr Uchiha," said Sensei while making a move to introduce me, "meet 'Hound' - you'll understand the necessity of keeping our identities to ourselves. He's the best placed to answer all of your questions, and, was it the case, the only one able to teach you how to use the Sharingan."

I stayed very politely two steps behind Sensei, before saluting the old-fashioned way by bowing, hiding and swallowing the shock.
May I throw my arms to the sky and begin a heartfelt monologue on the world injustice now?

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The ... 'interview' with Itachi went more smoothly than I could have imagined. He already knew quite a lot about what was happening to him - he had a bit of a hard time swallowing the fact that the Sharingan tales weren't just tales, but once that was passed, his questions were surprisingly well thought. I would have even never thought about a couple of ones if it had been me asking Obito, but it was normal of Itachi to be more concerned - while Obito had been alive, me having the Sharingan was the last thing ever I would have thought about. So I had to pull out the answers to his questions from the depths of my memories of Obito, the few Uchiha archives I had been allowed to read and the somewhat extensive knowledge of my family archives.

Reno and Vincent both stayed quiet in their corner - Reno threw in a word once or twice, just to say that some questions wouldn't have answers until Itachi was really one of us.

I paid close attention to my body language as long as I was in the room, so as 'Hound', ninja, would never be associated with Kakashi Hatake, student - I was very not curious to know how Itachi would react to that. The raspy voice I was still talking with was useful at least in separating the characters, I doubted he had noticed my damaged voice in our short encounter in school.

I noticed also that he didn't activate his eyes once - had he already control over it? Or was it going and leaving without control from his part? Don't think I was complaining; the last thing I needed was a blinding headache because of the pulse in my eye in answer to the activation of his. And now that I was thinking about it, I was beginning to have some drafts of theory about this - a tour to the medical archives was in order, if Tsunade herself couldn't help.

I don't know how long we stayed in this room, but when Itachi left, Reno and Vincent on his heels, and a team probably already on their path, the light out had gone down, almost enough to be qualified of night. I stayed a moment in the meeting room, long enough to untie the mask and rub my eyes. Then I left in quest of Sensei if he hadn't gone home yet.

He found me before I found him. And I noticed all the more the strange activity of the offices.

"Sensei."

"How did it went?" he asked, going through a handful of paper before signing every single one.

"A warning would have been nice, this guy can't stand me - and the game with 'Hound' won't last forever with his eyes." And I couldn't save his brother. The thought startled me, and I swallowed before going on. " He seems to be taking the whole thing quite well - I don't know for now if he already has any control over his abilities, but I suppose I won't know till he's in."

Sensei sighed, his head bend over the papers.

"We need him; and we can't take the risk of him being recruited by anyone else, it's too dangerous - for him as for us."

"Sensei," I said, putting my hand on the desk he had 'borrowed' to sign, "I'm not sure to be able to teach him anything." He raised his head, and used the time to take the mask off. "You know as well as me that I don't have a normal Sharingan - and that I have no control over it."
"You're the only option Kakashi - you're the only known alive person in all of Konoha to have both the Sharingan and the appropriate knowledge. Be there tomorrow at first hour," he said, going back to the papers and closing our discussion.

I hung the mask to my belt and pulled the bandana to cover my eye before turning around.

"Kakashi, one last thing."

"Sensei."

"I'd like you to attempt contact again as soon as possible."

"Yes Sensei."

I saluted with a brief move of head before stepping out for good. Between a rock and a hard place... Sensei's tone of voice had left no place for time : I had to go see Iruka again tonight, and I was responsible for teaching Itachi should he decide - not that he really had a choice in the end. Not that I had one either. I just had to follow the orders.

The bench in the lockers was terribly comfortable, and I wouldn't have minded staying on it for five more minutes if a team hadn't come in at that point. I hurried to take off my uniform and pass my clothes back on. I grabbed my bag, careful not to draop anything this time, my phone in hand - my phone black and dead for lack of battery.

Night had fully fell upon Konoha when I sat at a bus stop, the lampposts bathing the deserted streets in a dirty orange glow. I wasn't feeling the cold seeping through my clothes to my bones, nor my knees taking themselves for some extra Jell-O.

Iruka...

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I didn't spot the team placed around the pub. I was a bit more focused on how to climb to Iruka's place. The back door seemed like the best choice.

The back door wasn't closed. There was a big guy behind, in the shadows - one of Iruka's uncles, and he wasn't exactly easy-gooing-looking.

"What do you want?" he said, his jaw playing under the skin.

"Ehm... see Iruka?"

The lopsided smile and the idiot act didn't had any effect on this guy. He stayed blank. I tried to get around him, but he grabbed me by the arm and put me against the wall before I could escape him.

"Listen to me ninja-boy, we're taking care of our own."

This wasn't the place for the idiot act anymore.

"As we do."

"Oh, really? What about the operation, how long was it now? Three years ago... the one which ended in slaughter - you're taking very good care of your own... No, see, the thing is that we don't appreciate it that much is others putting their nose in our business. Or getting a bit too close from some of us."

The operation... the operation three years ago... Oh Obito oh shit How did he knew that?! Business? Getting too close? Unaware of the storm raging under my scalp, the guy went on.

"And I appreciate it even less when a little shit of a shinobi of your kind is taking my nephew for a ride."

His grasp on my arm tightened, hard enough to bruise - maybe even hard enough to break.

"I never 'took him for a ride'," I gasped from between my teeth.

As a reply, he narrowed his eyes and his hold tightened again, before he put his other arm across my throat, making it impossible to swallow.

"I'm asking again. What do you want?"

He was strangling me, black creeping too quickly from the edge of my vision, and all I could reply was a pained gasp.

The lamp over us switched on abruptly, followed by a voice I knew - a voice which startled the aching void inside.

"Franck? What are... Kakashi?"

The uncle -Franck- released me brutally, leaving me to slide to the floor. Oho, forgot to eat again, me... Iruka was looking at us from the stairs.
 
"What do you want?"

"Iruka... I promised you, I told you everything..."

"Get out."

He turned his back on us, ready to climb back the stairs. I got up using the wall behind me, my knees shaking.

"Iruka! How am I supposed to say-"

"I don't need neither you neither that to top it all!"

He took the stairs four by four, and I heard every single step as I heard his door slamming. I stared at nothing in front of me.

Franck opened the door and leant against it. I got out and the door, as it closed behind me, echoed.

There are two thoughts battling for domination in my mind. One was :  Oh shit, oh shit, they're from the European Organisation. The other was a very big nothing.

I found myself before Rin's with no recollection as to how I had walked to there.

OoOoOoOoOoO End twenty-sixth chapter OoOoOoOoO

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