Uchiha Setsuna had been one of those that turned that their back on their leader during the founding of their beloved village. When he finally realised what Madara had tried to warn them of, he had been ashamed. He could see the Uchiha being slowly excluded from power, he could see that the Senju grew as the clan began to gain more privileges, with greater reputations because of their relations to the Hokage.
The position of the Police Force was one that they were granted as an appeasement of being denied the Hokage title twice. Most saw it as an honour, but Setsuna saw it as an insult. The Uchiha were the co-founders of the village, but they were being shunted to the side was the Senju flourished. At first, he hadn't minded, as the Uchiha were sick of war and conflict, but as time went on, it became clear that the Uchiha would never be held in equal regard as the Senju. Madara's betrayal as the first shinobi to desert their village also painted them in a bad light, but they had endured through the initial suspicion.
Setsuna had quite liked Senju Hashirama as the Shodaime – he had been fair, encouraging the Uchiha to live in harmony with the Senju. He hadn't tried to shift the blame of Madara's abandonment of the village, and tried his best to help. Their alliance made them unbeatable. They had banded together, with more and more joining their cause for peace.
No, it was his brother, Tobirama, his successor as the Nidaime Hokage that made Setsuna realise that everything that Madara warned them of would come true. Setsuna wasn't the only one that came to the same conclusion. Several others gathered together in an attempt to bring the Uchiha back into power, but they were ratted out by their own clansmen. They didn't even give them an execution – shoving them in a cell for a few years with their chakra sealed before letting them live in the outskirts of the compound in shame.
Setsuna was an old shinobi now, well into his fifties, still distrusted by the clansmen that still remembered what he tried to do three decades ago. He had taken great joy in the fact that the Nidaime had died with Saratobi Hiruzen instated as the Sandaime, as the Uchiha were treated much better as the Senju began to die out. He had atoned for his sins, quite happy with the way that his clan would prosper, his resentment for his clansmen long gone and forgiven.
Which was why, just hours before the Kyuubi attack, when half a plant that looked like a Venus fly trap claiming to be the will of Uchiha Madara appeared before him, he attacked without hesitation. If he had been in his prime, he might have been able to beat the original Zetsu, but Setsuna was ancient by shinobi standards, with most of his power diminished by old age.
"Will he be able to keep up? He's a bit…frail," White Zetsu asked doubtfully, peering down at the struggling shinobi.
"He doesn't need to," Black Zetsu responds, his features changing into the man below them. Another Uchiha Setsuna stood in the room. "We only need his eyes."
"Sensei! Kushina-nee!"
Kakashi skids to a stop before the bodies of her master and his wife. She is not the only one that arrives at the scene, the Sandaime and his guards following close behind. Her sensei is pale and still, and Kushina looks close to death as well. As she approaches, she kneels before them, hands hovering, as she didn't know what to do or how to help. The red head tiredly opened her eyes, gaze focused on her fellow jinchuuriki.
"Kakashi…you look…wonderful," The Uzumaki chuckles, but coughs blood as the Sandaime gently props her up. "Promise me…promise me that you will look after Naruto."
Kakashi's eyes dart to the sleeping babe on the sealing altar, and she gingerly scoops the child into her arms. He had her sensei's bright yellow hair and tanned skin, but he had Kushina's features.
"I'll protect him," she says, eyes starting to burn. "I swear it."
Kushina's eyes crinkled upwards, a soft smile on her face. Sensing her time was near, and clinging on for as long as possible, she weakly cupped Kakashi's cheek.
"Don't train too hard…don't be afraid to ask for help…make sure to spend time with your friends…and one day…take off your mask…don't be afraid to show the world who you really are." The edges of Kakashi's vision started to blur, but she stubbornly kept her tears at bay, hoping that her last moments with Kushina would remain clear. "Minato would be proud of you – I'm proud of you."
Having said her piece, the Uzumaki let her hand drop, sliding down Kakashi's cheek and onto the blonde tuff of hair of her son. With a loving smile and one last exhale, and Kushina succumbed to her injuries, leaving her only son orphaned, and the girl that she mentored alone.
As the Sandaime lowers Kushina to the ground, Kakashi clutches the sleeping baby closer, and cries.
The funeral is miserable.
It doesn't rain, but the sky is dark and the village is still in ruins.
People mourn for the Yondaime Hokage and the shinobi that died.
As people start to leave, the Sandaime approaches Obito.
"What do you need Sandaime-sama?" He asks when he sees the reinstated Hokage beckon him over.
"Obito-kun," The Shinobi no Kami greets with a grim face. "I hope you are coping well."
"It's…it's fine. It hurts, but I'll get better," Obito says bitterly. His sensei didn't spend much time with him before his death, but he had tried his best. The blonde man had been there to help him when he was too weak, and he was grateful for everything he had done for him. He didn't know Kushina that well, but she had been that nice woman that fixed them up after training was a bit rough. He'll miss both of them.
"I apologise for asking such a trivial question, but do you know where Hatake Kakashi and Nohara Rin are?" He hadn't seen them anywhere during the funeral. He wanted to see them but it was understandable if the Hokage didn't know, he couldn't remember the faces and names of all his shinobi.
The weary man frowned, "I do not come bearing good news. Since you are Minato's student, I've come to tell you this personally."
The feeling of foreboding was almost overwhelming for Obito.
"When the hospital collapsed, several medics and medic-trainees where still evacuating patients. Nohara Rin is MIA."
After the Kyuubi attack, the prejudice against the Bijuu and their Jinchuuriki are at an all time high.
Kakashi is forced to stay in ANBU again.
She doesn't mind.
She's with remainder of Team Ro (who are down to three members), who are the ones that are taking care of the Kyuubi jinchuuriki, as more than half of their squad had perished in the attack. Three were killed, and two are missing. Kakashi doesn't know them that well, but she stays silent as Souske and Daichi mourn.
"Jiraiya."
The white haired man hops into the room through the window, and leans against the sill. He observes his sensei, looking more tired than he had ever seen him. He is cradling a sleeping baby with blonde hair and distinct whisker marks on his cheeks.
"I want to adopt him," The Toad Sage says, as he takes the babe from his old master. He can see both Minato and Kushina in him, and it leaves a painful ache in his chest. He ignores the pain, because he has promised to be the godfather of this child, and he will do his duty. He'll take little Naruto with him in the road, teach him his father's tricks and keep him safe.
"Young Kakashi has also asked to adopt him, as well as numerous other shinobi and clan heads," The Sarutobi sighs. "My advisors as well as others on the council have forbidden anyone to claim guardianship of him. There will be a power struggle within the clans if I did, and the others will start to claim that I favour one over the other…I have always detested politics."
"It would make sense for me to look after him," Jiraiya protests. "I'm a fuinjutsu master."
"A jinchuuriki isn't allowed to be raised abroad, lest the council think that you are trying to subvert the loyalty of a powerful asset."
"How can you let them talk about him like he's a weapon?" The white haired man says in disbelief and anger.
"Because in their eyes, that is what he is!" The Sandaime snaps. "The shinobi think he is a tool, and the civilians think he's a monster! He is a child, and I want the best for Minato's son, but there is little chance that he will have a normal childhood with so much discrimination against the jinchuuriki. Do you know how many people called for the execution of Kakashi?!"
He starts pacing as he rants.
"And that now, Minato's seal has failed, her true identity has spread throughout the village. It's dangerous. The shinobi council has tried to keep her safe, but after this attack, tension is starting to rise. I don't think that the citizens will ever truly accept her."
The Sandaime Hokage might have continued, but he was interrupted by the arrival of a masked ANBU.
"Hokage-sama," the elite agent greets, silver hair glowing in the moonlight. "The autopsy is complete. They await your arrival."
The aged man takes the youngest Uzumaki from his student and hands it to the agent, who disappears with a quick shunshin.
The Sarutobi then motions for Jiraiya to follow, as he leaves his office and make his way to the building temporarily converted into a makeshift hospital. Entering the basement, he nods to the ANBU guarding the door and ushers the Sannin in. Uchiha Fugaku is already there, dressed in the KMPF uniform, standing by the body on the examination table. Yamanaka Inoichi stood next to him, as well as Orochimaru.
"Have you identified the body?"
It wasn't much of a body. Half of its face was gone, and its left arm and leg was missing. The right half of its body was mutilated. Some of it was the Kiiroi Senko's work, but most of it was from someone else. It stirred something from within Jiraiya's memories.
"Uchiha Setsuna. Still an active shinobi, in his late fifties, former member of the KMPF, possessed three tomoe sharingan, and lived alone with no children or spouses. He was one of the Uchiha that participated in the attempted rebellion against the Nidaime." Fugaku handed over a file of papers to the Hokage, who briefly skimmed over them.
"Inoichi, have you been able to glean anything from his mind?"
"Not much. There are powerful mind blocks that prevent me from seeing most of his memories. What I do know, is that he used his eyes to control the Kyuubi, and that he briefly fought with Minato before he was incapacitated. There are gaps in his memories, and it gets…confusing after this. He appears to be attacked and eaten by a peculiar creature."
Orochimaru makes an interested noise, eyes gleaming.
The Chief of the KMPF starts at this, turning to the Hokage and the Yamanaka Clan head. Jiraiya's eyes also widen at this new information, and says, "That matches the autopsies of the ambassador and his escorts."
"As well as the Uchiha that have gone MIA only to be found in pieces," Fugaku adds. "Many more are still missing. Do you think this creature is the one responsible?"
So it wasn't animals that devoured the bodies?
The Sandaime turns to Inoichi. "What does this creature look like?"
The man places a hand over the remains of Uchiha Setsuna head and closes his eyes. "It looks like a green haired man with half his body split. One side is black and the other is white. There is one instance where he was seen merging with walls and the through the ground."
"Alert the ANBU and jonin to keep an eye out for this creature," The Hokage orders before addressing his pale skinned student. "Orochimaru, did you find anything of significance?"
"Well," He says, putting on gloves before approaching the body, Iniochi respectfully moving out of the way. He gently pulls back torn skin and flesh, displaying the damaged heart. A heart with a ruined seal. "I searched through his other organs, but they were either too damaged to assess, or untouched. The heart is the only thing that has traces of a seal. There is nothing on the skin either, but the eyes were crushed."
Jiraiya leans down to observe the seal, twisting his head to the side to get a better look. "Can you reconstruct the heart so we can see the full seal?"
"Who do you think I am?" The snake Sannin scoffs, before retrieving a scalpel and several forceps.
"It could be the remnants of the fuinjutsu that sealed away his chakra. He was one of the rebels that were spared from execution but punished instead," Fugaku replies, though sounding slightly unsure.
"Chakra suppressors are typically put on skin, not the heart," The Toad Sage remarks, eyes glued on the seal that was slowly being reconstructed.
"Sensei, there's a jar to your right, on the tray. If you would pick that up…" Orochimaru says, not looking up from his work. The Sarutobi glances to his side, and finds the aforementioned jar. He brings it up to his face, looking at the tiny lump of white substance that was placed inside. "I found it in one of the wounds. I haven't been able to identify what the white substance is, but it's been infused with the DNA of the Shodaime."
The Sandaime almost drops the jar, but sets it on the tray. "Any corpses that have been retrieved with similar injuries are to be re-examined. We need as much information as we can get."
Orochimaru nods absentmindedly, but also adding, "Traces of that substance were found on the bodies of ANBU Team Ro. Similar injuries and cause of death, but they weren't as bad as this one. They didn't have the seal on the heart either."
As he says this, he finishes putting together the damaged heart, and steps away to show his work. Now with all the pieces together, the Toad Sage doesn't need long to identify the seal.
"It's not a chakra suppressor," He announces rising from his position. "It's a curse tag. Someone's been controlling him."
When Uchiha Mikoto confronted her, Kakashi wasn't sure where their conversation was going. She had interacted with the woman before, and she quite liked her, but most of the time it was on behalf of Kushina. Sometimes, the duo would drag her out as a pack mule (under a henge, of course) when they went shopping and gossiping. Sometimes she offered her training tips and genjutsu advice. Kakashi even babysat her eldest son when she was doing D-ranks before Obito and Rin joined the team.
The pretty woman had managed to catch her on one of the rooftops near the Uchiha compound. Little Itachi was accompanying her, and gave her a small but confused smile (he recognises her, but isn't his old babysitter supposed to be male?), though he politely stepped away to calm his fussing younger brother when they started to talk.
"Here," the Uchiha matriarch says, handing over a scroll. As Kakashi unfurls it and reads, Mikoto begins to talk. "Kushina and Minato had always seen you as one of their own. They were planning to officially adopt you after Kushina gave birth, but…"
The last Hatake doesn't want to cry in front of another person, but it's hard to stop her eyes from watering when she sees physical proof of how much her sensei and Kushina loved her. The mother of two hesitantly continues.
"I know that we don't know each other that well – and maybe we could – but I'm not leaving you alone like this. Kushina would kill me if I didn't make the effort to look out for you. We have a spare bedroom, and you'll always have a place at our table, and you only need to drop by every once in a while, but you don't have to if you don't want to– "
Kakashi is touched, and deep down inside, she really wants to accept her offer. She craves a place to belong, and not to return to an empty apartment. Minato and Kushina are gone, and Kakashi longs to fill the gaping void in her heart, but the number of people she can trust have dwindled down dramatically. She wants to trust so badly it hurts, but she doesn't want to intrude on the Uchiha's head family. "You don't have to be obligated to do this, I don't want to burden you."
"No, no," Mikoto insists. "It's about time that the Uchiha started to take care of our own."
"B-but, what about Fugaku-sama?" Kakashi stutters.
"Oh don't worry about him, he agreed to it," the dark-haired woman says, waving her hand dismissively, her best friend's influence shining through. "And if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to stop me. He hates sleeping on the couch."
"…Thank you, Mikoto-sama."
"Just Mikoto is fine. But…is that a yes?"
He needs to see Kakashi.
Obito doesn't care if his teammate is in ANBU or under house arrest, because he needs visual verification that he is not the last of Team Minato.
"I don't think you should," Gai says gravely when he grabs him by the shoulder.
"I'm going whether you like it or not! I need to see him!"
At the rather distinct male pronoun, Gai winces while Genma almost chokes on his senbon. Ebisu is pointedly not listening to the conversation about the Sanbi Jinchuuriki. Obito takes the moment of Gai's slack grip as an opportunity to make a run for it.
As he speeds off to wherever he thinks the Hatake might be, Genma asks, "He does know that Hatake is a girl now, right?"
It's pure luck that Kakashi is actually home when Obito kicks down her door yelling at the top of his lungs.
It is also pure luck, that he catches her in the middle of changing.
"Ever heard of knocking?" She asks blandly as she pulls up her pants. She's been around males in all her years of living – she's been one for more than half of it – and thus, she has no body shame around the people in her life. Obito has gone silent, blatantly staring at her breasts and the curve of her hips, his brain not quite registering what he's looking at. It's been a year since he's seen Kakashi, and Obito's been expecting him to change a bit since they had last met, but this…this is not what he had in mind. Kakashi's face is also bare (woah, she's beautiful), but the Uchiha is very much stuck on the fact that Kakashi looks very much like a woman.
"Ha ha ha," He laughs nervously, eyes still glued on the Hatake who is sitting on the bed and taping up her shins with bandages (who is still very much shirtless and maskless). "You got me! You can drop the henge now."
"It's not a henge," Kakashi utters, throwing on a tight sleeveless shirt and pulling up her mask. "I'm a girl."
"Oh…so you're a girl?" Obito says blankly.
"Yep," Kakashi answers, pulling on her gloves.
"…Oh. Okay."
"You're taking this very calmly," she notes, tying up her hair and putting on her hitai-ate.
"I don't think it's actually getting through to me yet. Just wait a moment."
Kakashi shrugs, picking up her father's tanto and Obito's wakizashi and grabbing a sharpening stone. Obito takes this time to wait for his brain to catch up with the overload of information, as Kakashi sharpens her swords.
Kakashi has boobs.
Girls have boobs.
Kakashi has some rather unmistakeable hips.
Girls have hips.
Which makes Kakashi a girl.
Which explains a lot about the things that Obito had been questioning about his teammate, like why Kakashi would never joins them in the onsen.
But Kakashi could also be a hermaphrodite, but Obito very much doubts that. He (SHE) said so himself (HERSELF).
Ergo, Kakashi is a girl.
…
Oh.
Oh.
OH.
…
KAKASHI IS A GIRL.
…
"YOU'RE A GIRL?!" Obito points a wobbly finger at her. He makes a variety of interesting sounds, his face turning pale from shock.
"Yes," Kakashi drawls, a defensive edge hidden in her mono-toned voice, still sharpening her weapons that suddenly look very menacing. "I believe we've established this already."
The Uchiha splutters.
There are no words that Obito can make, though random noises are coming out of his mouth.
KAKASHI IS A GIRL.
Seeing his amusing reaction, Kakashi asks with a raised eyebrow, pausing in making her blades as sharp as can be, "Do you have a problem with it?"
(No, he does not. He's fine with this. Very fine.)
The words hit him with the force of his Sensei's rasengan.
KAKASHI IS A GIRL.
Holy shit.
Obito's eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he finally faints.
And his one last, entirely inappropriate thought was, Damn, I'd totally tap that.
OMAKE: [Torture] Training 101 – Kushina style
(For nocloudypooh)
"Excuse me?" Kakashi gapes, unsure if she heard her right.
"You're excused," Kushina replies, as she continues to drag over several large boulders to the edge of the waterfall like they were bags of rice. She dusts her hands off and plants them on her hips. She then repeats, "We're gonna start off light because you're still recovering, but your warm up today is to swim up that waterfall. Hopefully you'll be able to dodge the boulders, and then we'll be able to start stamina training."
Kakashi wasn't even sure if swimming up a waterfall was possible, but Kushina must have gotten impatient with her staring, because the next thing she knew, she was plummeting off the edge of the cliff and into the water below.
As soon as she surfaced, Kakashi paled, and dove to the side as a boulder came crashing into the spot she just occupied. Kakashi started sweating.
She's crazy!
A head of red hair peeked over at the top of the waterfall, with Kushina readying the next boulder.
"Chop chop, Kakashi!" She said cheerfully. "We don't have all day!"
OMAKE: Haircut
(For Swagheili)
Kakashi hates her long hair.
It's still brushing against her calves, but its tangled and dirty because she trips on it frequently. It throws off her balance when she jumps, and its far more trouble than it was worth. It's entirely impractical.
She had tried to keep it long as a homage to Kushina, but this wasn't going to work.
She was tempted to shave it all off, but Mikoto barged into the bathroom with a scandalised shriek when she was prepping the clippers.
"Mikoto-san?!"
"You fool!"
She slaps the clippers out of her hands and grabs her by the shoulders with a grip of iron, shaking her back and forth. "Why would you do that?!"
"It's getting in the way," the Hatake mumbles dizzily.
"You will not touch those clippers again," the Uchiha mutters darkly, snatching up a pair of scissors that Kakashi left on the sink. "I'll do it."
When she's done, a heavy weight has been lifted, and Kakashi marvels at the fact that she doesn't have to strain her neck to keep it upright. Her silver locks are trimmed neatly to just below her shoulder blades.
"Not shorter?" She asks curiously, fingering a few strands.
"If it gets too short, you can't tie it back, and it'll keep getting in your face," Mikoto answers, brushing off loose hairs on her shoulders before gathering her hair into braid. "Better?"
"Yeah," Kakashi says feeling her troublesome hair out of the way and much more practical. "Better."
Finding out that Kakashi is actually a girl has solved Obito's sexuality crisis.
I'm still open for requests. Speaking of which, just wait a bit erneste. Your omake is next.