AN: This is my contribution to Catch Your Breath Fanweek 2016, a celebration of Lang Noi's fic Catch Your Breath. This is the first of three, possibly four parts, the rest of which will be posted soon, summer classes permitting.

Thank you Lang for sharing such a wonderful story with us! And thank you to my fellow CYB fans and Beta who helped with the title!

Content Warnings: Profanity, PG-13 Movie level violence

The Party Kakashi wasn't Late for

Part i of ?

Upon reflection, Kakashi thought to himself while leaning out of breath against the impossibly tall building, maybe mixing Tailed Beast Chakra and space-time jutsu wasn't the best idea.

And what a sour twist on what had otherwise been the start of a pretty great day, Kakashi hadn't had as much time to train with his teammates these past few years as he had when he was younger; between his ANBU schedule and Kei's over a year long deployment there had hardly been time to say hello, let alone train together. So the joint training/jutsu experimental session with Kei to try and replicate the Tailed Beast boosted Kamui used against Orochimaru was something he had been looking forward to all week.

It's like the universe is conspiring against me, Kakashi complained in the privacy of his head, I finally have some downtime to spend with Kei and I wind up stranded in some city I've never seen before.

The closest Kakashi had seen to the ridiculously tall buildings all around him had been in Ame, but this was certainly not Ame. The first clue had been the lack of rain, the second was the incomprehensible speech of the bustling crowds around him; the odd machines filling the roads were the third and final clue that Kakashi had found himself very far away from home indeed.

Falling back on the shinobi skills that had saved his skin time and time again, Kakashi evaded the notice of the people streaming up and down the street by tucking himself in the shadows a few stories off the ground of an alley further down from where Kamui had dumped him. He rested best he could to hopefully regain enough chakra to either fight off any locals who objected violently to his presence or to make a return attempt at the space-time jutsu in the next few days.

Conserving energy while keeping watch was anything but strenuous. An inattentive street vendor helpfully provided him with lunch; as greasy as the meat was he could hardly choose to be picky. Between the actionless observation and purloined food, Kakashi recovered from the initial winding of his jutsu trip to this foreign city relatively quickly.

As the hours passed, Kakashi was surprised by the lack of any shinobi or other security forces investigating his sudden arrival in this city. Certainly his jutsu had been picked up by some sensor? The amount of power he had channeled into the space-time technique that landed him here in the first place had not been inconsiderable.

Kakashi was wavering on whether to risk some intelligence gathering and finding a better place to spend the night given the lack of an overt response to his arrival when the day only got weirder. From his elevated vantage point, Kakashi could easily see the blue sky above the city twist and rip to open up a dark punctured wound in the air. The monsters that almost seemed to swim down from the newly formed hole were an almost expected cliché at this point.

Pushing his hitai-ate up with his thumb, Kakashi observed the invaders with his Sharingan. The creatures descending from the portal snapped into sharper focus with the dojutsu: the sharp shine of armor on the creatures, the patterned ripple as they undulated through the air and the lack of chakra powering their flight. There was some sort of energy powering the creatures; but whatever it was, it wasn't chakra. Watching with apprehension, Kakashi noted that on their current course, the creatures were headed straight for the city underneath them.

Well, I guess that explains why the locals were busy.

oOo

Officer Antonio Morisi had been with the New York City Police Department for about twelve years now and he had seen some shit. You couldn't patrol the streets of the greatest and busiest city in America without running into just about every flavor of crazy under the sun.

But space aliens invading the city? That was new.

Morisi swallowed the lump in his throat as the shadow from one of those flying alien whales passed over him and his partner on its way further into the city. Dealing with this was hilariously above his paygrade and several times too big for the pistol at his hip. As he watched, the big alien started shedding smaller aliens who began to build a swarm. Some of them stayed with the big mothership alien, but others began to break off, including a handful that were swinging around and heading in their direction.

The sputtering of his younger partner bought him back to the street. The rookie cop had only been on the force a few months now and was understandably poleaxed by the aliens zipping through the sky. Attention drawn back to the ground, Morisi surveyed the street of New Yorkers standing strangely still, eyes fixed on what was going on above their heads.

Internally Morisi swore, him and his partner were the only cops on this street and he wouldn't bet his last paycheck that the aliens had dropped in to play tourist and visit Times Square. Which meant everyone on the street was sitting ducks if the extraterrestrial visitors decided to go all Independence Day on them.

"Lloyd! Hey Lloyd! Eyes on me!" At the sound of name being called, Lloyd jerked to face his partner, eyes wide enough to show white all the way around.

"Focus Lloyd. We need to get people off the street and inside as soon as possible. Do you understand?"

Faced with a command, Lloyd's spine straightened and he barked a quick "Yes sir!"

Rookie now in line, NYPD Officer Morisi raised his voice and started ordering people inside with a voice more often used to break up drunken parties than evacuate streets as his partner did the same on the other side of the street.

At first few people listened to him, most of the still silently stunned crowd was fixated on the air show above. But as some the smaller aliens buzzed closer to them, the crowd grew more panicky and noisy. More and more people began pushing and shoving towards the doors of the street level shops and business, anxious shouting drowning out the police officer's orders to seek shelter indoors.

The screaming didn't start until one of the smaller alien crafts swooped down and fired on an abandoned taxicab, blowing it into a crackling fireball.

Officer Morisi grimly pulled his pistol from his holster and flicking off the safety, pointed it at the alien craft that appeared to be setting up to take potshots at the crowd still in the street. This close he could see that the smaller dots from the mothership were some kind of jet board/chariot things with two big nasty looking aliens on board.

Taking aim at the driver of the alien craft, Morisi fired off a trio of shots. Fortunately, at least one of the shots seemed to hit the driver, judging by how it's arm jerked and it pulled the flying chariot out of its bombing run. Unfortunately, this now made Morisi a priority target and the gunner of the craft shifted from targeting the people on the street to the police officer.

Gritting his teeth, Morisi lined up to take another shot at the alien bastard invading his city even he had a sinking feeling that the other guy's gun was more powerful than his.

But before he could take the shot, as the aliens flew their craft in front of an alley something practically flew out of it and slammed into one of the aliens.

oOo

Kakashi crouched, hidden in the shadows, and watched chaos filled the street below him. The large monster had passed them by, but smaller creatures had dropped off of it and were spreading out over the city. Over a dozen of the smaller creatures swung back around to guard the rear of the largest monster and still more were splitting away from the main group to backtrack along the path they had flown.

Judging by the uniforms and the orders shouted in an authoritative voice, some sort of city guards or officials had finally shown up to take command. The words were incomprehensible to Kakashi, but the meaning was fairly easy to deduce. The civilians on the ground began to rush towards the buildings lining the street for shelter while the city guard remained to direct stragglers to safety.

Shifting his attention back to the invading creatures, Kakashi was now able to make out details: approaching his position were flying machines each with two creatures atop it, one directing the machine and one manning what appeared to be a weapon given it was shaped like a cannon. The creatures were shaped like people with two arms and two legs, but using the Sharingan, Kakashi noticed that their proportions were too off to be human and the visible skin on the creatures was a mottled green and brown.

Kakashi hadn't seen creatures like this before and had no idea of their weak spots or vulnerabilities; however, in his experience, removing the head stopped most monsters dead in their tracks.

The creatures firmly established their hostility by using the cannon on the back of their flying machine to destroy one of the metal transportation machines on the road. The energy used in the attack wasn't chakra, but it was still explosively effective.

The lead flying machine was getting increasingly closer to the mouth of the alley Kakashi was in when one of the city guards drew some sort of weapon and attacked the invaders. The creatures dodged the attack, but their attention was now on the city guard and judging by the expression on the guard's face, he knew it as well.

As the creatures turned their cannon on the city guard, Kakashi made his decision. Whatever these creatures were, it was clear they were not friendly to humans and Kakashi couldn't think of a better way to gain favor in a foreign city than to assist the guards in defense of said city. Drawing a kunai, he coiled himself on the edge of the building and waited for the creatures to bring their flying machine past his position.