Chapter 3: Totally Always the Plan, Yup
by Ehmstar
Kakashi waited for the thumping and muffled yelling from below to stop. He looked at the splinter-y remnants of the extremely tacky dresser that he chopped to bits to warm up the bathwater, and shook his head ruefully. Really, they should be paying him for disposing of it properly. Ingrates. He sighed and got up out of the bath, grabbing a few spans of linen and furs from a stool nearby to methodically dry off with. He sat down on the stool next to the embers of the fire —it was safely cooling on the ceramic sheet he had put out under the tub, really, did these people think he was a crazy barbarian from Fang? —and consulted his internal clock. It’d only been about ten minutes since the clone had popped.
Mm-mmm. Too soon.
Kakashi moved to the windows, placing some of the (now wet) animal skins back on the one frame, which consisted of a mix of hand-carved branches and lacquered wood that had been cut into a window shape. It was almost as awful as the dresser. Hmmm, maybe he would take a second bath later as well… Bah. He left the other frame bare, the window still wide open.
The midday sun was waning and the sky was looking cloudy, probably foreshadowing a small evening snowstorm. They got a lot of snow here apparently. Perfect either way. He pulled out his bandelier of storage seals meant for worn equipment and outfits and started to rifle through them. After a minute of searching, he finally decided that the standard gear with a few modifications for the weather would suffice. He pulled out a white cotton cloak, as well as a brown one that had a pile of pine needles sewn into it.
Kakashi took his storage seal filled with storage seal blanks and unsealed the box of storage seal blanks. He paused for a moment and contemplated how it was possible that you could store boxes of uninfused storage seal blanks in a storage seal, and yet you couldn’t store infused storage seals inside each other. Sealing was a strange and temperamental art, indeed.
He took one blank out, hastily updated the paperwork on the inside of the box's lid, touched his finger to the seal blank and ran chakra along the brushwork design to infuse it and allow the piece of palm-sized paper to wield powers from beyond time and space, before scrawling “Shitty Pine Tree Camo.” on the back of the new storage seal.
He put the messy pine needle cloak on top of the storage seal before poking the paper with a finger and nudging the seal a bit with his chakra.
The mess of pine needles and fabric vanished with a poof. The box of storage seal blanks went back into the storage seal blank storage seal as well.
Y’know, Minato-sensei always did hate that naming convention. Heh. Aunt Kushina and Jiraiya thought it was hilarious though...
He zoned out for a bit.
…
…
…
Kakashi stopped zoning out for a bit. He consulted his internal clock again. It’d been about forty to forty-five (?) minutes since his clone dispelled.
Perfect.
He reached over and grabbed a bucket of water, before upending it on the embers of the fire. The charcoal hissed and steamed before going out.
He double checked his gear before jumping out the open window.
----------------------------------------
He was one with the pine tree, his shitty cloak blending in perfectly against the tree trunk. He was a fixture of the environment, just another background object in the light snow and densely forested mountain pass. He was stillness itself, the motions of his chest breathing and muscles clenching and unclenching would be unnoticeable to almost all observers, completely non differentiable from the pine needles rustling in the wind or the snow swirling back and forth, or the branches swaying, ever so slightly.
Kakashi felt a small bit of fur twitch under his nose as a bushy tail swiped back and forth.
There was a fucking squirrel in his hair, too.
After about fifteen minutes of doing things by the book, Kakashi decided to hell with it. He batted the squirrel away. It retreated to a smaller branch overhead, hissing angrily at him. He wiped equal parts venom and spittle off of his face, and returned his attention to the surroundings below.
A lone, almost blocky figure hurriedly trudged through the forest path, moving with a purpose from the direction of Kazahana castle. It was hard to make them out through the weather and branches from this far away without his Sharingan. Still, they looked like they were late to some appointment or another, or were heading quickly to grab something at the last minute from the city proper.
They had a nice and heavy fur coat on, so they certainly weren’t some manservant out to run an errand. Probably some important somebody-or-other from the daimyo’s court. They were stout, so likely male. The master of the hunt or... whatever the flaming shit these nobles randomly entitled themselves with up here.
A few minutes later they passed out of sight of the castle and started jogging. Decently fast, towards the city. The man passed right by his position without even bothering to look up. Terrible spatial awareness, even for a civilian. You just had to keep these things in mind if you were doing something nefarious.
Kakashi allowed himself a small smile. He had been fifty-fifty on whether whatever intelligence source Glacier had almost certainly placed at the castle was going to be a civilian informant or an actual infiltration spec ninja. Guess it was the former, which made the next part fun.
He disappeared from his position on the tree.
Yes, go be a good little informant, he thought. Go let whoever your contact is know that the infamous Copy Ninja showed up at the castle with a bang, not even two hours ago. Please, go straight to wherever they are with great haste to tell them the news...
Trees shook and white powder gently sprayed into the air, as he darted across the landscape.
----------------------------------------
The man ended in front of a market stall, speaking to a woman that looked to be about a year older than Kakashi was. She had bright blond hair, was slightly shorter than he was, and was wearing... what was probably standard commoner attire for the area, underneath a patchwork cloak. She was selling a variety of smoked fish. The two finished their conversation, and the man bought the rest of her wares. The woman had a very poorly done (well, from his point of view) non-reaction to whatever was said to her.
You must be our Glacier ninja.
She very inconspicuously went to the back of the storefront before vanishing out the back.
Kakashi was already moving, ghosting across the rooftops in pursuit. It would be nice if he could remain undetected on the approach, but keeping up with the Glacier ninja was more important than the style points now.
Still, she seemed to be a little preoccupied. Or maybe he was just lucky for once.
The two left the city limits and in a few minutes were closing in on what looked like a campground half-hidden in the surrounding forest amidst a pile of snow drifts. Kakashi uncovered his Sharingan, but kept his right eyelid tightly closed.
Hmmm.
“Earth Element: Living Roots Technique!” he said, feeling his awareness expand as a net of earth element chakra shaped itself outwards from his feat, waxing and waning chaotically with each step.
It was always good to get a few quick jutsu in, if you knew you were about to be kicking some ass in the next minute.
----------------------------------------
The two ninja entered the base camp area at approximately the same time. Kakashi had overtaken the Glacier ninja slightly. He opened his right eye, did some quick mental calculations, and then suddenly changed direction to crash directly into her. He shifted his mass and used chakra to adhere his feet to the ground, before capturing the ninja in a harmless grapple and throwing her about ten feet back.
The Glacier ninja looked at him warily. It could have just as easily been a debilitating strike to the neck, or a crushing kick to the ribs, and they both knew it.
He shrugged, and spread his arms slightly, almost beckoning her forward to fight him. He stood his ground.
The woman paused, surprised for a moment, before flashing through hand seals.
“Wind Element: Dustoff!”
A blast of wind crashed into the ground between them, shooting dirt, debris, and a hell of a lot of snow in his general direction. The wind didn’t stop there, it swirled and surged, turning the blast of debris into a hazy cloud. Kakashi quickly put up an arm to stop any from getting in his eyes. The wind chakra pushing the particles clung to his outstretched arm for a moment, and ground the snow and dirt back and forth into his cloak, before dissipating.
Hmmm. Would have hurt to get hit with that in the eyes. Smart woman. Kakashi dropped his arm back into a more suitable position, brushing it off idly with his other hand.
“Fire Element: Blazing Fists!”
The Glacier ninja flashed through a quick series of hand seals. Her hands ignited into twin balls of shining flames. She shifted into a taijutsu stance.
Kakashi stared her down for a moment. He shrugged, and reached into his vest pocket to pull out his secret weapon.
He flipped his copy of Icha Icha: The Passion of the Ice Queen back to where he’d left off, and started reading.
“You know, I’ll give you a freebie,” he said, “I’m going to stand here and read the rest of this page. Get a good hit in—”
His opponent rocketed forward right after he said the word ‘page’. He had the Living Roots technique active, so he could feel it the instant she moved. His Sharingan, though not focused directly on the woman, still could see the ghostly images of movements that it predicted she would make an instant later. Kakashi didn’t end up needing either of those though, because…
Kakashi pivoted widely to the side, avoiding the flaming uppercut that would have struck right through the back of his book, before bouncing off his pivot step with a bit of chakra repulsion and kicking her in the solar plexus. She quickly rolled to the side and jumped back up on her feat.
“You know,” Kakashi said, chuckling ever so slightly. “Would you believe me if I told you that every single time I’ve done that, the other person always takes the same angle of attack? I was really hoping you would have done something different, but...”
The ninja dashed into the woods on the left.
"Tch. Rude!"
He stowed his book away and followed.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“You know, maybe something like this?”
Kakashi ran right past her guard, dancing through some seriously impressive strikes, screwed her positioning up with a pinch of Gai’s Fancy Footwork Routine, and then finally smashed the back of her head forward with his fist.
The woman stood there, stunned for a second, before the aura of flame around her fists blinked out, and she was replaced by a small person-sized log.
Kakashi Substituted with a boulder.
Okay, this is starting to get a bit annoying.
----------------------------------------
The ninja darted off, leaving a trail of Substitution targets behind. Her Substitution technique didn’t seem particularly well developed (to be fair, neither was his, but his was still passable, at least) so he could just match her on every Substitution.
They both landed at the clearing at the same time. The woman’s eyes darted back and forth across the landscape, looking for more things to substitute with, but it was completely empty.
“Nice of you to fetch all those logs for me, “ Kakashi quipped, “It would have been a real pain to spot them all myself. Eyes get tired with all this snow around, you know? It’s boring to look at.”
The ninja flashed a few quick hand seals.
“Fire Element: Blazing Fists!”
She reignited her hands. She brought her fists up in a taijutsu stance and looked at him with apprehension.
“You know what?” Kakashi asked, “That looks like a fun jutsu. Let me try it out.” His hands flashed the same hand seals, and his chakra coils pulsed and he instinctively manipulated the turbulent elemental energies in the exact same way that his Sharingan eye had just observed.
“Fire Element: Blazing Fists.”
Kakashi flew forward in a burst of speed. He saw the obvious flurry of quick blows coming, it was clear as day where they would hit, even a few instants before his opponent had been halfway through the motions. He sidestepped them, gave her a quick kick in the ribs, before ducking down under her guard and driving one of his burning fists partway into her thigh as she — too slow, of course — tried to smash him in the face with her own fiery punches.
Huh, think she singed a few of the longer hairs though. Not bad.
She collapsed to the ground screaming as her leg gave way. He leveled a kunai at her throat and looked her in the eyes. Her own azure eyes widened, she visibly grit her teeth to try to block out the agony, and she tried very, very hard to not move.
“You know who I am, and you know what I can do, and you know that you’re royally fucked right now unless you do exactly what I say, right?” Kakashi asked. He projected a little bit of killing intent outwards to underscore his point.
The temperature in the clearing seemed to dip a bit. The Glacier ninja twitched, and almost seemed to swallow her own tongue for a second, before giving a quick nod.
“Plot to assassinate the daimyo. Your people are in on it. Talk.”
“There’s going to be a rendezvous on the night of the 20th with a few of the remaining Glacier chūnin and Dotō Kazahana,the daimyo’s younger brother. It’s going to be held in the function room of the Woolly Yak Inn.”
The wind howled through the clearing and the snowfall picked up.
“Shit, really?” Kakashi asked. “I have a room there.”
Wow. That would have been inconvenient.
“Do I look like I’m lying?”
“No.” Kakashi said. Huh, well this was a pleasant surprise. Maybe more like an unpleasant surprise that’s been averted. “Alright. Good. What’s your name?”
“Ichihara Mieko...” she managed to choke out.
“Alright. Don’t move a muscle,” Kakashi said. He left the kunai on the ground right next to him, and reached for the storage seal that held his medical equipment. With his right hand, he started channeling medical chakra through his fingertips into Ichihara’s thigh.
“So,” Kakashi said, while unrolling some cloth bandages, “I’m going to fix you up a bit. After that, you’re going to show me all of the ninjutsu you know. I mean literally all of them. And after that we’re going to have a long conversation about your boss.”
“Ah. Alright, but…” Ichihara said, before coughing up a storm. “Grkkf!” Her eyes fluttered and her head drooped. The rest of her body rag-dolled awkwardly to the side. Kakashi checked her vitals quickly. Stable.
thunk
He tapped her head with the flat of his kunai.
“Did you just pass out?”
thunk thunk
“Oi, hostage. Wake up.”
thunk
“Alright, fine. I think I need a second bath anyway.”
----------------------------------------
Kakashi woke up from his nap and peered outside. Hmmm. It was early, probably the morning of the 20th. He had slept a few more hours than he had intended. He got up from his bedroll, and peered across the room at his slumbering hostage/patient/prisoner/accomplice(?), Ichihara Mieko.
He had tied her securely to the bed with ropes, obviously. Ninja wire too. And also rigged the underside of the mattress with explosives. Quite a lot of explosives. The corners of the sheets were also soaked with oil, in case of any fire ninjutsu related accidents.
He channeled some medical chakra into his hand and placed it on the bandages he applied.
Nope, nothing, Kakashi thought. She is probably really hungry though, after being tied to that bed for a while.
Easy fix. He made a few hand seals.
“Earth Element: Earth Clone.”
Kakashi rifled through his ever expanding array of storage seals (food and furniture editions), before handing a few to the newly created clone. Elemental clones were not like Shadow Clones. While shadow clones had all the skills and intelligence of the original, elemental clones had a fraction of the caster’s expertise in any given area, and had almost no intelligence beyond following simple orders.
He always found it amusing that an earth clone was literally as dumb as a rock.
“Set the tables in here up around the bed.” Kakashi commanded.
The clone complied.
Kakashi and his earth clone started unsealing full course meal after full course meal around the bed. Ichihara stirred at the commotion.
“Oi, wake up.”
The woman opened her eyes and looked around nervously for a couple minutes.
Kakashi let the silence drag.
…
…
...
“Food?” she asked.
“Help yourself, ” he replied. “The clone can get you and feed you whatever you’d like. Clone, make sure to do that stuff if she asks.The food is obviously not poisoned, because why would I kill you?”
The earth clone nodded. Creepy.
The two ate in silence for a while. Kakashi had some barbecued pork from one of the Akimichi restaurants. Ichihara tried a smorgasbord of the available food.
“So,” Kakashi said, breaking the tension. “Let me preface this conversation by pointing out a couple things. One: you currently live and die at my mercy. You are alive and being fed nice food, so I must not be such a bad guy. As you’ve seen, I can be much worse.”
Ichihara froze in the middle of a bite of some gyoza. The earth clone picked up another piece with some chopsticks and prodded her mouth with it ineffectually.
“Clone, stop that. Two: I’ve already figured out about your village’s nefarious plans to assassinate the daimyo, so there’s really no point in secrecy there.”
“Three: I am going to stop them with or without your help, so you might as well help me for the time being. At least for a little while, so you have a chance of altering the outcome to your best interests and/or betraying me later. Also I am very obviously helping you at this point in time, in a very visible fashion, so you already look like a traitor.
“The daimyo has made it known to me that your village’s command structure has changed recently, and that its ability to fulfill mission orders has been drastically hampered. Now, to me, this screams ‘coup’ or ‘civil war’ along with the associated loss of manpower that comes as fallout.
“You also seem to be clanless, since I don’t recognize you as being one of the four Glacier clans from my intel. They probably treat you like complete garbage in your village because of that. I doubt you were even on any particular side during whatever happened. In fact, I bet it generally hurt a lot of people you care about, so you probably have no love lost for whoever the fuck is currently in charge. Am I on the right track?”
The Glacier ninja had adopted a neutral, pensive expression and was currently staring out the window quietly.
“More or less,” Ichihara said, pursing her lips. The Glacier ninja frowned, and shook her head, as if trying to clear some brain fog.
“What do you want?” she asked, an undercurrent of fear still present in her voice.
“All of your techniques, for a start.” Kakashi said.
Ichihara looked at him and swallowed nervously.
“And if I say no?”
Kakashi smiled and uncovered his Sharingan.
----------------------------------------
“And the other Yakuza faction are from Frost and they want to muscle in on Goda Jin’s turf. You can find him by heading to the mansion in the northeast section of the city, the one with the mammoth statues by the front gates. The daimyo’s daughter owes both of them money, she has a gambling problem by the way, and has been struggling to pay them back.”
“Mmmm. We’re getting a little bit off-topic here. Why don’t you tell me about the coup in your village?”
“Sorry! Sorry, sorry. So, it all started with this complete asshole named Nadare Rōga, who was the heir to the Nadare clan, wielders of the Snow Element bloodline…”
“Go on.”
----------------------------------------
“And really, you were super right about that, and I would really love to see these assholes get their comeuppance, and I have no idea why I was being such a bitch about it, really, you don’t have to…”
Ichihara kept talking.
Ah, damn, the images of Orochimaru’s Freaky Snake Pit Experiment was probably a bit too far... I should do something to make her feel better.
“Oh, um and point four: I brought cookies.”
Ichihara stopped spilling every secret short of those written in her childhood diary and cocked her head sideways.
The room was silent save for the crackling of the fireplace.
“Come again?” she asked lamely, noticeably confused.
“...they’re fresh?”
----------------------------------------
Kazuma the innkeeper grumbled as he came up the stairs. There were more complaints about the bathtub guy. Folks across the hall heard weird noises, thumping, and some muffled yelling or crying or something.
Damn rich customers. They were always the ones with the special requests and the freaky habits and property-destroying weird quirks and the… Well, they were generally pretty crappy. Still, a fire in the room wasn’t half as bad as that mishap with that minor hill daimyo from Noodle a few years back.
The innkeeper reached out to bang on the door for the fifth time that morning.
“Oi, bathtub guy, are you going to keep yourself locked in there all day or I am going to see what the hell you did with my wonderful —”
“—Oh, that's an interesting taste, I didn’t expect it to melt in my mouth like that.”
His hand froze at the door.
“Yummy,” the woman’s voice continued, “If I wasn’t drop-dead exhausted from earlier or if my arms weren’t tied up like this, I…”
Kazuma quickly but quietly backed away from the door, his face redder than a Vegetable country lobsterturnip. He’d have to come back later, or maybe he’d just charge the guy extra when he checked out.