In which people (and things) sometimes fall through the cracks between dimensions. (Loosely related collection of scenes and snippets; FF7 Remake and Naruto crossover.)

#2: It's been nearly a week since Kakashi wakes up badly bruised and missing memories. He's lost in more ways than one and all he wants to do is go home.

Altimeter: An instrument for determining altitude attained, especially a barometric or radar device used in an aircraft. (Lexico, Oxford)

A/N: Oh goodness, I'm so sorry. If you read this story when it was first published, this chapter may look familiar. I messed up and forgot to separate it from the previous chapter, and then uploaded the wrong file to the Doc Manager. (Chapter 3 will have actual new content.) My bad. This is what I get for attempting to write during the middle of the night with only three and a half hours of sleep. Meh.

Meteorology

(And Natural Disasters)

Chapter 2 "Altimeter"

It's been nearly a week since Hatake Kakashi has woken in the shadows of a crumbling, dilapidated building, badly bruised and missing memories (missing comrades) and suffering from a mild case of chakra exhaustion with only the clothes on his back and whatever meager supplies have remained in his pouches. Since then, he's taken to sneaking around the neighborhood, minimizing chakra use, surreptitiously stealing bare necessities, and trying to scout the area as if he's been given a long-term espionage mission. It's the sort of work he's thought he'd grown out of after (somewhat reluctantly) becoming a jounin sensei, but years of fieldwork experience has helped him transition back into the mindset and routine of inconspicuous infiltration.

Yesterday had been… interesting. Today would hopefully be more informative, if he manages to spin everything together seamlessly.

"Yo, Boss!" Kakashi calls out, settling further into his persona of Sukea (fine, his imagination needs a bit of work, but he has already previously trained himself to respond to the name, so it works for the time being), new to the big, industrious city of Midgar and recently-hired stable hand at Sam's Delivery Service. He fidgets with the hem of his shirt and tugs at his bandana, squinting in the bright morning(? Is it even called that when there sometimes isn't even a discernible sun? This place is strange and the giant structure above the sector keeps pinging against his instincts) light and shifts on his feet, the perfect picture of eagerness and poorly-concealed energy.

Chocobo Sam returns the greeting and gestures to some of the pens where the big yellow mounts excitedly wark when they catch sight of Kakashi.

"Feed the birds, and take some of the restless ones out for a quick run. I've got a few deliveries for you as soon as you're ready."

"Yessir!"

It's mindless, but soothing work. Kakashi spends the day taking care of the birds (after raising and training eight excitable, stubborn nin-dogs, these giant, gentle beasts are a breeze in comparison), running deliveries, trading small talk, and listening to gossip as he passes residents in the various sector slums.

The diction is strange, the names of people and places and things are slightly foreign and difficult to pronounce. But the grammar and syntax are familiar enough, if a little odd. It's akin to travelling to some backwater region on the edges of Earth country and familiarizing himself with the local dialect where the vowels twang, extra sounds make their way between syllables (or some sounds are dropped entirely. It's maddening), the consonants are harsher-sounding and more guttural, and words are shared but might mean completely different things if the culture has been isolated long enough (false cognates. Gotta love them. Not). Fortunately, Kakashi's current identity is a young, bashful but earnest, simple-minded country bumpkin from one of the many small communities in the middle of nowhere who is somewhat expected to have an accent, be curious about the world around him, and not know the intricacies of city living (or even aspects of their technology).

Eventually, the overhead lights dim in mimicry of a sunset and Sukea's shift at Sam's Delivery Service ends. He returns to the main office and receives his pay for the day where he also receives invitations from his coworkers to hit the bar or patron some of the establishments available at Wall Market. Kakashi intends to scout out some more, but Sukea is supposed to be new and unused to the hustle and bustle of city life (not true), so he begs off with the excuse of fatigue (not exactly true, but lingering chakra exhaustion is not a condition he wants to advertise) and the promise of maybe joining them the next day (possibly likely, if only to have easier access to information and a better cover for gathering it).

He heads back to the small, dingy hotel that caters to short-term workers or visitors of Wall Market and goes through the motions of greeting his neighbors and getting ready for bed. (Sukea's community is a small, tiny thing that doesn't even have consistent access to hot, running water. Sukea likes taking long showers. Sukea is fascinated by the water and air filters, the large television screens, the sophisticated ID scanners on the trains, the mechanics of the weapons… Sukea asks a lot of well-meaning but awkward questions. Sukea hasn't talked to many people outside of his town. Sukea is quiet but adorably earnest and the residents of Wall Market take his quirks in stride since "he's such a sweet thing and a hard worker, don'tcha agree?") Details are what really cement, stabilize, and enhance a cover in the long run, and Kakashi has no idea how long he has to stay in Midgar before he can gather enough supplies and figure out what he needs to do next.

Kakashi... is mentally exhausted. He wants to head for bed like Sukea would, but he needs to scout. His choices lay before him, and normally it's an easy decision if he has backup. But that's the problem. He doesn't. He's gone longer without proper rest, but pushing himself too hard when in foreign territory without appropriate backup is just as likely to compromise his position as blowing his cover. So instead of crawling under the sheets, Kakashi sighs and turns off the lights, changes into a set of stolen nondescript clothing (that Sukea would never, ever wear — because Sukea is a law-abiding citizen and all of his clothing is bought with hard-earned wages and will not be in any way connected to petty theft), cracks open the window, props himself against a wall, and lightly dozes until most of the other renters in his hallway seem to have turned in or left for the night shift. (In that way, Wall Market reminds him of Tanzaku Gai, where entertainment is abundant at all hours of the day or night.)

He sneaks out through the window when the coast is clear and calmly makes his way to the collapsed expressway that's en route to the slums of Sector 5. His mission tonight is to do a little bit of light training (and maybe some monster hunting, if he can believe the gossip — and isn't that a strange thought? Monsters. Monster hunting. And then selling the remains of whatever parts they leave behind after they disintegrate into glowing lights. How is this his life?) and figure out why his hard-earned chakra control is for all intents and purposes nonexistent.

But.

There's no actual mission, no outline or parameters that help guide him to reach stated objectives and tangible results. There's no real plan other than to continue to gather information in hopes of figuring out what brought him here and what he needs in order to get home. His observations so far have concluded that his chakra isn't replenishing anywhere near its normal rate even with his left eye covered (when people ask — if people ask — he scratches at his bandana and cheerfully tells them something along the lines of, "Oh, my mother forgot to tell me not to run with a knife in my hand! I was a clumsy kid!" and laughs while [they think] they carefully shake their heads where he can't see).

By the time he leisurely makes his way to a well-secluded part of the seemingly abandoned expressway (to be fair, it looks like very few people have come this way in the last few months; he just chooses a location where the dust has not been disturbed at all, even by monsters), several other things become more clear. Despite the glowing lights from disintegrating monsters, there's no discernible chakra in the air or in any of the other lifeforms around him. There's something else instead, something similar but not quite like natural energy, but it's unfamiliar and Kakashi isn't keen on experimenting with it just yet. ("Materia," one of the shopkeepers says when Sukea drops off a delivery and shows hints of being captivated by the shiny orbs. "You interested?") He hypothesizes that his body isn't getting what it needs in terms of nutrients from the food because something is wrong with his production of physical energy. But something is wrong with his spiritual energy, too, and meditation and chakra control exercises are burning through his reserves instead of building them up.

Plus, to make things stranger, the gravity is different. At first, he chalks it up to fatigued muscles, body aches, or injuries from whatever-the-hell had dropped him here (a fight [to the death {again}]? Kamui? Experimental jutsu?), but previous days have slowly brought up more inconsistencies. The air is heavier. Back home, Wind country has canyons that carve deep, deep into the earth, and a good shinobi has to compensate by channeling just a little more chakra to traverse the same distance that normally would come easier in higher elevations. Midgar feels similar to those twisting canyons, but even more oppressive in the weight that drags at his limbs. It takes much more effort than it should to scale rubble, to execute taijutsu maneuvers that are second nature and ingrained into his muscle memory, to jump distances that even Academy children can clear without thought.

By the time he's done running through warm-ups and an easy set of kata, Kakashi is trembling with exertion, sweat dampening his hair and clothing, breath coming out in uneven pants. He flops over a steadier piece of rubble and takes a swig from his water canteen. The air here is terrible and muggy and harsh in his lungs. He can imagine the tiny particles of pollution clogging delicate tissue, can feel the beginnings of an itch at the back of his throat that wants to turn into a hacking cough, can almost feel invisible hands squeezing his chest even as he forces himself to take slow, measured breaths.

Gods, he misses his old masks.

He also misses hearing actual birdsong instead of the synthetic warbles of the jukeboxes or gramophones scattered in odd corners; he misses the comfort of relaxing behind his myriad of traps in his apartment; he misses being able to train without worry that he'll topple over; he misses the smells of Konoha's marketplace; he misses tea and miso and good food; he misses his dogs and his books and the option of seeing familiar faces (or sometimes not seeing — it's the option that counts); he misses messing with his students in broad daylight; good grief, he misses actual daylight. This world is so strange and different and wrong.

He needs to get home.

With an explosive sigh, Kakashi slowly (physically and figuratively) picks himself back up and trudges back to Wall Market. For now, he'll stumble into bed and force himself to rest.

There's more work to do after he wakes.

A/N: Whoops. Both Sakura and Kakashi's scenes sort of… ran away from me. They kept getting longer and longer, and Kakashi insisted on noticing and interjecting more detail and dang it, I just wanted to be done! (Kakashi, you jerk! Why do you have to be so smart and analytical? I only wanted to give you six hundred words like Sakura, but you went and commandeered more than a thousand more!)

Thanks for reading!

~Ika

2020 April 28