A Flash of Pink

Kakashi relaxed his fingers and the man collapsed, dead by strangulation. He wiped his fingers on his dress and turned to face the room. It was a complete shambles; there were five dead and one unconscious ninja, a hogtied body servant and heavily bleeding woman alongside the dead nobleman. All of the furniture was either upturned or destroyed, Iruka was picking splinters out of his arm and Naruto was attempting to stuff himself back into his top, having burst loose in the kafuffle.



As soon as they had entered the room Kakashi had felt Iruka’s presence nearby as well as that of the ninja who had crept up behind him - it was the same ninja who had kept feeling him up on their trip to the chateau. He had tired to distract the other, lower ranked, ninja by moving into suggestive poses whilst he served himself some food. He appeared to have succeeded rather better than he had hoped – all of the attention had been on him when the other ninja had been thrust through the wall.



The distraction had proved to be devastating to the enemy, they had been overwhelmed before they’d even managed to stop thinking with their dicks. The fight had been over in minutes, Kakashi had strangled the nobleman, Sakura had tied up the body servant and the unconscious ninja, and although Naruto had accidentally injured the woman when she’d tried to resist at least she wasn’t screaming for help or attempting to kill them. Iruka had been particularly fierce and killed the remaining ninja with a rain of kunai, his eyes were still flat with rage.



He had been very impressive to watch and Kakashi had taken the time to enjoy the sight of his friend in action having positioned himself behind the nobleman he was strangling – out of the way and not needed for this fight. He didn’t often get to see Iruka in a battle situation, they sometimes sparred together but due to Iruka’s teaching they didn’t often get teamed up for missions. He was much better than the average chuunin in Kakashi’s opinion; of course in Kakashi’s opinion Iruka was better than average period.



Sakura gathered up the three living enemy captives and checked out their vital signs. Nodding that all was OK she checked their bindings and turned to Iruka for further instructions. He smiled grimly and they set to gathering up the bodies of the ninja and investigating their equipment and looking for anything interesting whilst Naruto stood guard. Kakashi began undressing the nobleman whilst investigating every item of clothing and checking all of his pockets.



The man was bland and boring but his clothing was anything but. It looked gorgeous and felt even better, Kakashi doubted that he had felt silk this fine before. It was very well made the stitches hardly visible and immaculately pressed. The man was clearly trying to make up for his decidedly un-regal stature and appearance. He was the kind of man that you glanced at and immediately forgot, he was using his clothing as a banner proclaiming that here was a man of power and breeding. Wether this was true or merely an act was yet to be seen.



Naruto had questioned him on why he was undressing the pervert and Kakashi blushed slightly, he was curious as to wether the man was trying to compensate for something by choosing little girls or if it was just a morality defect. He didn’t find anything conclusive however he did find a small key around the mans’ neck. It was small and decorative, like the keys to jewellery boxes. Thinking of jewellery Kakashi quickly palmed all of the jewels that the man was wearing. If they found any of the abducted girls alive they would need all the money they could get.



Civilian life could be cruel to the victims of abduction and rape, some of the girls would need to buy their way back into their families as they were now ‘damaged goods’ unsuitable for marriage. Although how exactly this was the fault of the victim Kakashi had never understood. He had trouble understanding civilians at the best of times and he found their obsession with virginity and purity mind boggling. How did virginity or the lack there of change a person’s basic personality?



Sakura called out that she had found a keychain chock-a-block with keys on their ninja captive, the body-servant was shaking like a leaf and moaning quietly to himself whilst the woman was just lying there glaring at the ceiling. Sakura had stopped the bleeding almost immediately but she obviously wasn’t happy about being tied up. Iruka had gathered a few personal effects from the men but nothing spectacular, a few keys that looked like locker-keys and one that might have been a gate key.



When they had finished with the bodies Iruka stacked them up in a corner neatly, Kakashi had nearly laughed out loud at the caring gesture – he would have just left them where they lay. Iruka then turned his attention to their captives and quickly cast a complex jutsu on the ninja and the woman to prevent them from hearing anything. He then began questioning the body servant. Kakashi watched entranced – this was nothing like the way that he went about infield interrogations, this was so much quieter and a lot less bloody.



As Iruka carefully obtained as much information as possible from their three captives Kakashi began to look around at the hole in the wall that Iruka had made when he pushed the enemy ninja through it. It lead to a small and boring looking room that housed a small table with a well worn chair and nothing else, from the scuff marks on the floor it appeared as it someone had often come in the door, walked over to the cubby hole in the wall and then over to the desk before exiting again.



Someone had been spying on meetings held in the room that Iruka and his students were still in, someone had been spying for so long that they had ground their imprint in to the room. Running a finger along the edge of the table Kakashi could imagine a bitter person coming in here watching everything that happened and then recording it all in a diary. He wondered idly where that diary was.



Naruto, Sakura and Iruka emerged through the hole pushing the body servant ahead of them, Kakashi glanced back at the other two captives to see still bodies. Iruka was fuming, it appeared that the woman and the ninja had taken poison rather than be questioned further, he had found out a surprising amount from the servant though. The most important thing though was that there were only the six ninja employed; there were no others that could be lying in wait.



Slowly they gathered themselves and, pulling their captive along with them, they set out into the chateau to gather up the other servants, the civilian guards and anything or anyone else interesting that they could find. Kakashi was sincerely hoping that this would include some better clothing as he was starting to feel a little chilled in his revealing outfit not to mention the fact that it was very hard to look at Sakura in hers.



*******



Iruka was still upset at what the ninja who had snuck up on him had told him. As he had crouched there pressing his knife against Iruka’s throat the other ninja had gloated about what he had done to Iruka’s ‘girls’. He had described how smooth and soft their skin was, how sensitive, how tasty. How wanton they had looked lying sprawled naked on a futon tangled all together.



At that Iruka had lost his temper and surprised the enemy nin by grabbing the arm with the knife and, using sheer temper, thrust him bodily through the wall - his head connecting with the wall in a most satisfactory thud. He had immediately followed the body he had thrown out flinging kunai at the remaining nin, it had been very surprising that they had barely reacted, in fact at least one nin hadn’t even looked up before he died with Iruka’s kunai in his brain. The fight was over almost before it began.



Watching Kakashi’s small, feminine fingers finish slowly strangling the life out of the nobleman had disturbed Iruka somewhat, even though the man was a trained assassin seeing a young girl, even one dressed as a low-class prostitute, mercilessly murder someone without so much as batting a painted eyelid was decidedly odd. The man had barely even struggled which had also seemed strange until Iruka realised that Kakashi had immobilised him with a chakra string.



His interrogation of the body servant had revealed something rather sinister, the now-dead nobleman hadn’t always been the lord here. In fact the original lord had been the woman’s husband, he had died suddenly nearly twelve months ago, the man lying dead had been the woman’s lover living under her husbands very nose. Upon the death of the lord the woman had set her lover up as regent for her son. At first things had been good but they had gradually gotten worse.



The woman had never been the type of noble lady who appeared in Kakashi’s romance novels, she was cold-hearted and cunning. It had been her who had hired the missing nin, originally she had been having young noble girls kidnapped and ransomed but she had run into problems when some families had refused to pay. She had made some into servants, or rather more accurately into slaves, she had cut out their tongues so that they could never tell anyone about what had happened.



The body servant had gone on, detailing their spiralling descent to the current moment. Iruka felt sick. He had queried why the servant had stayed, in effect approving their behaviour by his passivity, and had been revolted to discover that they had been holding his five-year old daughter hostage. Iruka felt his compassion well up but the small, cynical part of his mind that Kakashi had been carefully nurturing told him that they would have to find this child before he would totally believe the man.



Their systematic search of the chateau netted them eight servants, twelve civilian guards, a change of clothing for the ‘girls’ and a bundle of stuff as Kakashi and his students called the strange bundle they had lugged along. They, rather conspicuously, had not found any sign of a noble son, a young daughter or any of the missing girls. Unless there was somewhere that they had somehow missed searching, Iruka turned to query the body servant again.



Abruptly he felt a tug at his pants leg, the same type that he often received from his pre-genin students. Glancing down he saw the top of Kakashi’s head, demurely lowered and a delicate hand still clutching his pants. Swallowing a sigh at the man’s theatrics Iruka crouched down and used a finger under Kakashi’s chin to make the man look him in the eyes. What he saw made him gasp aloud, swirling in Kakashi’s left eye was a Mangekyo Sharingan.



Nodding his head weakly in understanding Iruka placed his hand on Kakashi’s shoulder in reassurance as he watched his friend apply the full effect of his gaze onto their prisoner. It was surprisingly boring to watch, Kakashi merely gazed into his opponents eyes and his opponent stood still like a rodent hypnotised by a snake. Glancing around Iruka noted that they were the centre of attention, Sakura and Naruto especially looked surprised that their teacher was able to access his sharingan whilst in his altered form.



Abruptly the body servant collapsed into tears and Kakashi slumped against Iruka’s leg clearly exhausted. Sakura wordlessly handed her teacher a rice-ball she had filched from somewhere and Naruto offered a canteen of water. Iruka was touched that they would be so considerate although it did make him wonder how often Kakashi had over-extended himself for them to know automatically what to do for him. Iruka would have to have a long talk with the man when they got home.



Feeling Kakashi’s shuddering Iruka drew the man into a half-hug in reassurance and was slightly shocked that he was allowed to do so. It did not bode well for what the man had discovered inside the servants’ mind. Iruka watched fascinated as Kakashi visibly drew himself together and lent down again as Kakashi beckoned them all closer. As he related what he had found inside the diseased mind Iruka felt his guts roil in disgust, how anyone could be so sick and twisted was beyond him.



The body servant had been like a puppet master, hiding in the wings and holding all of the strings. He had come from a ninja clan originally, one that specialised in mind control jutsu. They had nearly been persecuted out of existence and this man had decided to go it alone and create his own twisted world. He was not very strong but he had cunningly worked up from small evils to greater perversions, had enjoyed making his victims think it was all their own doing.



On the upside most of the missing girls appeared to still be alive, kept somewhere dank, dark and nearby. After all what was the point of being an evil mastermind if you couldn’t gloat to your victims? Iruka vowed to release them as soon as he possibly could, he wasn’t sure what sort of mental state they would be in after being in this mans clutches but surely Tsunade-sama would know what to do for them.



Grimly he weighed up what he should do with this mind-controller, he felt like he should bring the man to the Hokage in case there were any side-effects from his jutsu, but on the other hand he wasn’t sure that the man wouldn’t find some way during the journey to work his evil again and escape. Iruka was spared the decision however as the man suddenly screamed and lunged for him, he automatically brought his hand up in self-defence and the man impaled himself on the kunai he’d forgotten he was holding.



Iruka let go of the kunai handle and the man fell to the ground dead. The servants and guards looked startled and Iruka saw confusion in a lot of eyes, apparently the effects of the jutsu wore off when the caster died. That was definitely a good sign. Signalling to his team to keep their eyes open he began to question their captives on the whereabouts of the missing girls, surely one of them must know something.