Playing the Game

“Taichou,” a voice complained into Kakashi’s earpiece, “there’s still no sign of them.”

“Radio silence except in cases of emergency, Tiger,” Kakashi commanded bluntly, not addressing his subordinate’s concern. They’d been here nine hours past the supposed meeting time already. The targets would show eventually – or, if the intelligence for this mission was as bad as for his last, they would not. In either case, there was nothing to be done right now but remain concealed. He turned another page of Icha Icha Tactics.

Bird startled him by speaking for the first time since they’d arrived. “Four shinobi bearing slashed Ame insignia approaching from one o’clock.”

Quietly, Kakashi stowed his book away. It seemed a shame to hurry up and wait, as it were, but the time for awareness was fast drawing near. Just as Bird predicted, four shinobi lighted in the clearing. The Rain nin plopped to the ground heavily, obviously weary from their travels. As they drank from their canteens and chatted idly, Kakashi strained to hear their conversation. The four foreign nin probably weren’t discussing anything of significance, but the Konoha ANBU were to listen in anyway, if they could. Kakashi couldn’t hear much in the way of distinguishable words, but he knew Cat was in better position for that anyway.

Not half an hour had passed before the other expected party arrived. No one radioed, this time, trusting the others to be alert enough to detect the arrivals on their own.

Four more ninja sauntered into the clearing as if they owned it despite the fact that it was in enemy territory, as indicated by their Iwa-emblazoned forehead protectors.

“Okamoto-san, I assume?” one of the Ame ninja called loud enough to be heard by all.

“Yotsuki-san,” the Rock nin acknowledged with a nod. “You have secured the area?” The wind carried the man’s voice straight to Kakashi’s hiding spot.

Yotsuki made a gesture that Kakashi couldn’t see, but Kakashi guessed the man had implicated that he had done so. Kakashi scowled at the basic incompetence; he knew Rain had been in political turmoil for some time, but this was supposed to be a platoon of jounin who should have known better than to leave such things up to chance. Despite the fact that in this instance, the oversight benefited his own team, it still made Kakashi uncomfortable; these ninja were, ostensibly, his allies and he might have to rely on them to watch his back one day.

Yotsuki withdrew a medium-sized scroll from his pack and handed it over without ceremony to the apparent leader of the Iwa contingent. As Okamato finished tucking it away, he froze. Kakashi felt his own muscles tense in response.

“If you secured the area, who is that in the trees over there?” the tall Rock nin growled angrily. “The agreement was four for four. You so blatantly break terms?”

Shit. The worst-case scenario for this mission was discovery with both foreign teams still in range.

Yotsuki was outraged by the implication. “Who – what?” he spluttered. “How dare you accuse us of –"

His blustering was cut short as Cat was hauled out of the brush by the three unnamed Iwa nin. She wasn’t struggling at all; Kakashi pushed his wolf mask to the side, uncovering his Sharingan to confirm that his teammate was under genjutsu. The chakra is concentrated in the left side of her brain, he noted, feeling a terrible sense of déjà vu. He loathed Rock nin.

Hating himself for letting her get dragged along in the dirt, he waited to see the enemies’ reactions before acting. The ninja closest to her kicked her right arm out from underneath her to fully reveal her ANBU tattoo. She didn’t wake from the pain, which meant the genjutsu was stronger than he’d feared.

“Konoha,” sneered Okamato, turning back to the Ame nin. “You said you’d keep your masters out of this, but you are more obedient than we thought.”

“With all due respect, Okamato-san, we are no one’s dogs,” Yotsuki bit out. “And certainly not Konoha’s. We knew nothing of this.”

“How else could you have missed her in your perimeter sweep? You’re lying, Yotsuki-san.”

“Perhaps our sweep wasn’t as thorough as it could have been, in our fatigue, but –"

Okamoto knelt in front of her and lifted her by her short, dark hair. He removed her mask and placed it carefully in his pack, presumably for evidence. “You won’t mind if I kill her, then?”

Yotsuki paused at this proposal, but not for long. “They themselves are breaking terms. It will cause trouble for us, but as an act of faith, you may kill the Konoha operative.”

Okamato turned Cat’s head to examine her in profile. “I don’t recognise her. Pity, really. She’s not ugly.” As he reached around to grab a weapon out of his pack, everything slowed almost to a halt in front of Kakashi’s eyes. He could see the trajectory the Iwa nin’s kunai would take, directly into Cat’s heart.

Kakashi would not allow that to happen. Hurling himself from dormancy into action, he sent a shuriken into Okamato’s throat before anyone could react. The man’s neck exploded in a red shower, coating Cat and the stunned shinobi around her in viscera.

That was the signal. As one, the three remaining Konoha ANBU burst out from their hiding places in attack formation. Though unfamiliar with each other, the Ame and Iwa nin formed an opposite formation around Cat, still guarding her, leaving Okamato’s body to bleed out where it lay. Clearly, the Konoha-Ame alliance wouldn’t be honoured on this makeshift battlefield.

This operation was never supposed to come to blows; the mission scroll itself read reconnaissance. Nevertheless, Kakashi’s team stood now, facing seven on three odds. Seven on three odds were not particularly good.

He looked at the faces of his opponents. All were wearing similar looks of confusion, but they were about to fight to the death for an objective none of them fully understood. Neither did his comrades know their purpose in the grander scheme of things. Such was a shinobi’s lot.

The song of a thousand birds filled the silence of the forest, all of nature pausing in anticipation of the coming destruction. Only Kakashi’s imitation was left now.

“Leave none alive,” he ordered, and then it began.

---

Kakashi flung the bloody scroll onto Tsunade’s desk with more force than he’d intended. Danzou’s desk, he internally corrected.

“Here,” he said, voice deceptively mild. “I’m sure it won’t contain the information you sought and you’ll be entirely justified in labelling this mission a failure, Hokage-sama.”

“Don’t be difficult, Hatake,” Danzou scolded, though his gravelly voice was even. “Your objective was to observe how the relations between Amegakure and Iwagakure were developing, not affect them.”

“You wanted evidence that Iwa and Ame were forming an alliance so that you could undermine it. Am I right?” Kakashi gave the impression of a smile, just as he always did at his most contrary. Danzou said nothing. “Consider the alliance confirmed; they fought as one unit. Consider that trust undermined, as well, just as you wished. When no one returns from the rendezvous, they won’t be quick to trust one another again.”

“You presume too much, Hatake!” the Hokage snapped. “Because you were a contender for the title, you think you have the right to question –“

“I never wanted your title, Hokage-sama. Even if I did, the Council chose you over me, so –"

“You have always been afforded a certain luxury, due to your connections. I thought I made it clear that such indulgences for you and others ended when I acceded to office, but you continue to abuse your position. I won’t allow it. After all, we can’t forget your other connections ....”

Not quite following, Kakashi remained silent. Danzou continued with a totally neutral expression. “It is apparent whose legacy you truly are. There was once another who abandoned his mission objective for a bleeding heart –"

Kakashi’s fists balled so tightly that his knuckles popped but he gave no other outward sign of anger. “As much as I’m enjoying this little chat of ours, Hokage-sama, I have some teammates in hospital that I should probably check on. Critical condition and all that. Agent Cat in particular was privy to more information than I.”

Danzou’s scarred jaw clenched at the indirect order, but it seemed he decided that getting rid of Kakashi was more satisfying than further dressing him down. “I will expect full mission reports from each of you upon recovery.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

Kakashi turned to exit, moving no more quickly than was decorous, but before he reached the door, Danzou offered a parting shot. “Failed missions don’t pay. Just a reminder. Tell your team.”

---

Almost seven hours and copious amounts of shochu later, Kakashi still had not set foot in the hospital. They’d all made it back to Konoha – just – in considerably poor health. Bird had been the first to sustain a serious injury and when the medic goes down first everyone suffers. Normally, they’d have gone slow and healed along the way, but with Bird out, that hadn’t been an option. They’d rushed home for medical treatment, exacerbating the damage. The pace took a toll; Tiger had collapsed in exhaustion two miles outside of Konoha and they’d had to leave him behind to be collected by medic-nin later.

Cat, still addled from the genjutsu, had giggled as they began to near the gates around eleven in the morning. Her mask had a bloody handprint across it – his, from where he’d haphazardly snagged it out of Okamato’s pack before they left. She was a few metres behind, dragging a mildly fractured leg turned seriously broken by hundreds of kilometres of fast-paced running throughout the night. “Taichou,” she’d gasped. “I know you like him,” she’d laughed, then, with an exaggerated conspiratorial wink, “but maybe you should let Mogusa-san walk now! The gate guards will know you have a favourite.”

“I don’t think they’ll figure it out unless you tell them,” Kakashi had called back to her, shifting the medic on his back. Dealing with a normally capable ninja whose mentality had suddenly reverted to childhood was really starting to grate on his nerves.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You’re right. You’re so smart, Taichou!”

“Can you keep it a secret?”

“Yes, Taichou! I’m very good at keeping secrets.” She couldn’t seem to stop tittering – he’d been listening to it so long that he almost regretted waking her up.

“Are you good at playing games, too?”

“Oooh, can we play a game now?”

“I bet you can’t keep quiet until we reach the hospital. What do you think?”

“I bet I can!”

“You’re breaking the rules already.”

“Oops! Sorry, Taichou.”

“I thought you were good at games, Cat.”

She just chuckled in reply, finally catching on. She didn’t speak again as they covered the last ground before the gate, but he thought her incessant giggling was probably worse.

When they finally got close, the chuunin on duty rushed out in concern, calling, “ANBU-san!”

Transferring Bird to one of them, he ordered, “Get them to the hospital immediately.” After giving them directions to Tiger’s location and warning them of Cat’s mental condition, he hurried off without a glance behind.

“But, ANBU-san, don’t you need to go to hospital....?” he had heard one of the chuunin call after him, but he was already gone.

And now he was in this seedy little saloon, getting drunk and still bleeding sluggishly from a couple of wounds. Mostly, he was just almost out of chakra and completely worn down.

“Oi, Kakashi-sensei!” he heard a vaguely familiar voice shout from across the room. He didn’t pay attention because he knew the voice didn’t belong to either of the only two who had the right to call him such a thing – even though he hadn’t really taught them much, in the end.

His luck had run out, though, because the owner of the voice approached him, undeterred by his snubbing. “Kakashi-sensei,” he said again as he came closer. His speech was slightly slurred.

“Kiba,” Kakashi finally acknowledged. “Didn’t know they served minors here.”

“Aw, fuck off,” Kiba protested, all semblance of respect forgotten. “You know it’s bad business for any bar tender to refuse someone who could kill him.”

True enough, though it had seemed a lot more reasonable when he was underage.... “You’d have a hard time doing anything like that right now, seeing as how you can hardly stand and it’s not yet evening,” Kakashi admonished, dimly wondering where he got off doing such a thing, considering he was half-arsed himself by now.

Kiba didn’t seem to register what he’d said anyway. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I was just wondering if you picked up more chicks when you come in all gory like that. Are you back from a mission or is it just for the effect?”

“Go home, Kiba, before you can’t make it there on your own.”

Seemingly losing interest, Kiba stumbled back to his section of the bar, where the highest concentration of females just happened to be. What a coincidence. Kakashi had to smile wryly at the boy. At least he looked like he was having fun.

Nursing a last saucer full of shochu through his mask, Kakashi looked out into the busy street. Why a tavern doing a roaring business in the middle of the day would choose to keep their doors flung open was beyond him, but at the moment, it was a convenient distraction. He watched the citizens of Konoha pass him by, going about their daily lives. A woman with shopping bags, towing a toddler. A couple holding hands. It was rather pleasant until someone he knew walked by. Yamanaka Ino had changed a lot, he guessed, though he’d never bothered to notice until now. She was stumbling down the street in torn clothes, at the moment, sobbing violently and looking the most frightful mess he’d seen in a long time.

He wasn’t the only one to notice. Nara Shikaku and Akimichi Chouza were sitting nearby, drinking together as they were wont to do. He saw their eyes follow the girl until she was out of sight; then their conversation picked back up with a more sombre tone.

“I knew when Inoichi had a daughter that there would be trouble,” Shikaku said, taking a swig.

“He was so dead-set on letting her be a ninja,” Chouza agreed. “And now look what’s happened.”

“I don’t blame the girl, though. Women just don’t have the constitution to be shinobi, when it comes down to it.”

“They can’t handle it, emotionally, when things go wrong. No daughter of mine would be a ninja. I know Inoichi has to regret it now, even though he won’t say. He should have made her work in his wife’s flower shop, like we told him to.”

“He said that women didn’t have to be melee specialists, and of course he’s right, but she’s an espionage specialist, isn’t she? A damn good one, from what I’ve heard, but it doesn’t matter, in the end. I give her until the end of the year to either quit or be killed on a mission.”

Chouza frowned. “That’s a little harsh. She’s had a rough go of it.”

“Our sons have had tough missions, too, but you don’t see them falling apart all along the street, do you?”

“No. I’m proud of my boy....” muttered Chouza, though he looked troubled.

Shikaku, too, looked unhappy as he finished his drink. “Maybe she’ll pull through. That friend of hers seems pretty steady.”

“The Hokage’s apprentice, you mean?”

“Yeah, the one with pink hair. She’s grown up well. Chose an appropriate field, too.”

Kakashi frowned along with them. What the hell had he missed with the Yamanaka girl? He wandered out of the bar, conveniently developing selective hearing when the bar tender asked him to pay his tab, and tried to spot that distinctive blonde hair again. It was so much shorter now than it used to be. He remembered the time she’d cut it so dramatically, right in the middle of her battle with Sakura in the Chuunin Exams. It had been a clever move, but not enough to win the fight.

She’d worn it long again ever since and he wondered why she had cut it this time around. If only he could find her in the crowd. There. He followed her discreetly, trying to discern where she was going, if she even knew. She was staggering, still bawling her eyes out, and seemed to be making arbitrary turns.

Using the last of his chakra to shunshin directly behind her, he said, “Yo.”

She jumped with a small scream, clutching her heart, and whirled to face him. “Kakashi-sensei, you scared me,” she whispered, voice hoarse. Close up, he could see the lipstick smeared all over her face, mixing with the snot dribbling out of her nostrils. It didn’t make for a pleasant effect.

“Sorry about that.” He gave her his brightest smile. “I was just wondering when you cut your hair?”

“Oh?” She reached a hand up to it, as if just realising its length. Her bangs were short and straight across her forehead, now; her hair fell in a platinum sheet to her chin and angled upward until it was above her ears in the back. “Why, do you like it?”

“Sure.”

He’d always been told that you should compliment a woman on her appearance, but apparently Ino was the exception. A physical change came over her immediately; her eyes darkened and her shoulders sagged noticeably. It was one of the oddest things he’d ever witnessed.

She shocked him again by laughing harshly. “Of course you do. Men always do. I hacked it off all plain, one day, and stopped conditioning because it’s useless, but my team leader said I wasn’t attractive enough and I had to change it.... So here it is. So glad you approve.”

There was a definite bitterness to her voice that hadn’t been there only last year, when he’d worked with her against Akatsuki. She seemed like an entirely different person. “Are you headed towards the hospital?” he asked bluntly. He’d noticed a pattern in her meandering but she’d never get there by herself as it was. “I can take you there, if you’d like.”

She paled. “Oh.... I’m making a scene again, aren’t I?” Kakashi felt it unnecessary to answer. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m trying. Really. C-could you –" Exhaling deeply, she tried again. “If you could help me find Sakura, I’d really appreciate it. I think she’s working right now.”

“Let’s try the hospital then, shall we?” He walked in the right direction, looking behind him experimentally to see if she’d follow. She did. She’d stopped crying, too, though she hadn’t bothered to wipe her face yet.

When they reached the building he’d been trying his hardest to avoid all day, he stared at her pointedly, willing her to enter on her own. She looked back at him timidly – again, unlike anything he’d ever seen before from this girl. “Do you – do you know which floor she’s on, or ... or something? I’ve never actually disturbed her at work before....” Ino squeezed her eyes shut, at this, and he could feel the shame rolling off her in waves.

“Come with me,” he said shortly, leading her forward once again. He breezed right past the front desk, though they called after him in scandalised tones. He was headed towards the ward where they usually treated those in grave condition. He remembered Sakura mentioning to Naruto once that when new trauma cases came in, she was usually shifted to help handle the overflow, and he happened to know that a couple of critical cases had indeed been recently checked in.

The nurses at the checkpoint outside the ward managed to waylay them, demanding authorisation. “I’m Hatake Kakashi,” he said simply. The nurse blocking the door faltered. She recognised him, it seemed.

“Even so,” she insisted bravely. “They don’t need extra people underfoot today. They’re very busy, you see –“

“I know. They’re busy saving my teammates.”

She wilted, moving aside to let him pass. “What about the girl, though?” The way her eyes ran down Ino’s dishevelled form made her disapproval clear.

“She’s with me.”

Ino darted forward before she could be questioned further. Once they were in, she turned to say something to him, but before she could get it out, Shizune called his name.

“Kakashi-san! There you are. Let me give you an update,” she said, hurrying over. Spotting Ino and giving a small frown, she continued, “Agent Tiger was successfully recovered and is in stable condition but not yet awake. Agent Cat is lucid and also stable. Agent Bird, though....”

“Well? Is he alive?” Kakashi demanded, impatience bleeding into his tone.

“Yes. We hope he’ll remain that way. He’s one of our best. I’d hate to lose him.”

Kakashi frowned. He hadn’t realised Mogusa had been quite that badly off, but he could feel Ino behind him attempting to will herself to disappear and it was making him uncomfortable. “I need to speak with Sakura. Have you seen her?”

Shizune seemed thrown by the change in subject. “If you want to know details about your comrades’ conditions, you can just ask me, as I’ve been working on –"

“That’s not it,” he explained tersely. “Just tell me. Is she up here?”

Wordlessly, Shizune pointed to a room on the left. Ino sprinted towards it, startling both Kakashi and Shizune.

Ino knocked on the door, though it was only a sliding door and not meant for that. “Sakura,” she said miserably, voice thick with tears once again. “It’s me.”

The door slid open to reveal a Sakura with surprise written across her expressive features. “Ino? I’m with a patient right now –"

“I’m sorry!” Ino wailed, suddenly louder than Kakashi had heard her yet. “I’m sorry that I can’t – but I need –"

Panicked, Sakura dragged her friend into another room to the right which seemed to be empty. “It’s all right, Ino. We’ll take care of it,” she was saying comfortingly as she shut the door behind them.

“What the....?” mumbled Shizune, staring after them.

Kakashi, too, was a little stunned, even though he’d somewhat expected it. “No idea.” The one time he gave into his curiosity, he still couldn’t manage to answer any questions. He’d go back to his old privacy policy from now on.

“You really should sit down and let me check you over. And what are you doing walking around in your ANBU uniform?” Shizune was saying to him, but he wasn’t listening anymore. Sakura had left the door open to the room she had first been in and he realised with a start that she’d been treating Cat. He could see the woman’s dark hair cresting the pillow. She caught his eye and smiled weakly.

“Do you want to see them?” Shizune asked and he snapped his attention back to her.

“No thanks. I hate hospitals.” With that, he turned on his heel and exited the ward, leaving Shizune muttering darkly behind him.

He should never have left the bar.

---

A/N: Ino may strike you as odd in this, but all will come out later. One thing I want to make clear, since it probably won't come up again, is that I don't dislike Shikaku or Chouza. As with just about everything I write, there is a lot going on "underneath the underneath" as it were, and their conversation is an expression of concern to be understood by each other as only two close friends can understand. However, as to the avenue of this expression of concern, Shikamaru had to learn his sexism from somewhere, and Chouza was in the Naruto-lynching crowd very early on in the series; I don't feel that these (brief) characterisations are too much of a stretch.

Danzou is a little too horrid here, but I'm working to lend him a little more depth than canon does while still staying true to his character. As he's shallower than a puddle and more static than a boulder in the manga, this is a bit of a challenge. There are also REASONS for his actions. One must also keep in mind that the readers' perceptions are limited by the characters' perceptions, which is significant.

The only original characters so far are Arai Shiori (Cat), Miyahara Ryoji (Tiger), and Hamada Hiroyuki (yet to appear). Extra credit to anyone who can place any of the other names, especially Mogusa (who is, in fact, canon).