Title: Priceless

Author: Emmy Kay

Summary: Iruka's work at the City Art Museum leads to more than he expected. Contains: AU, modern setting, yakuza.

Notes:For aythli, written for the 2012 winter round of the KakaIru fest on livejournal. Dear aythli, I tried very hard to put together something that you might like. (Many thanks to Megyal, who helped make sense of it at the very last minute. All errors are mine.)

Prompt: Undercover. Plot!fic.

Disclaimer: Naruto and all affiliated characters belong to Kishimoto Masashi. This story is written without permission and for personal/fan/nonprofit entertainment purposes only.

Iruka paid his fee at the desk and took the towels and soap the attendant handed to him. He walked into the bathhouse, hoping he projected 'casual.' He sure as hell didn't feel casual. He felt like a fool, like an intruder, like a hen entering the fox's den, here in one of the most notorious bathhouses in the whole city. A few heavily-tattooed men in various states of undress wandered about the locker room, eyeing him with mild curiosity. He hoped his brown-haired, brown-eyed ordinariness would quickly fade from their memory. He shed his clothes and placed them and his bag into a locker.

After a quick shower, he opened the door to the steam room, noting the 20 minute time limit. Then he took a deep breath and entered the steamy, poorly lit sauna. It felt like he was smacked with a wall of steam. Breathing became a bit more difficult. He sat down on the warm, damp tile, well away from the few other sauna inhabitants. And he waited.

There was little to do but wait. The man he was looking for, his prey, (so to speak, if a normally tweed-wearing, buttoned-down education officer for an art museum can be said to have something as action-oriented as 'prey') would come in his own time.

Iruka had first seen the man a year ago. It was in an upper middle class part of Konoha City, where the new glass and steel developments rose up above the street, while traditional wooden homes sat packed together under their shadow. A man with silver hair opened the door to Sarutobi's house, shocking Iruka with dissonance between his beauty and the old, messily healed scar that ran down the side of his face directly over his left eye.

"Hello. I'm Iruka Umino. I have a meeting with Mr. Sarutobi."

Mismatched eyes, one red, one black as tar, scanned Iruka's body quickly, appraising. Rather like an art historian determining whether some artifact was worth purchasing, Iruka thought. And like Iruka had seen multiple times in his years at the museum, there was dismissal when the object's promise turned out not to equal its reality.

"Come this way."

Iruka followed the scarred man down a short hallway. He was very tall and slim, the dark suit he wore simultaneously exaggerated the width of his shoulders and hid the true contours of his body. It was less than successful at hiding the smooth motion of the man's stride.

Angry, low voices buzzed from the door they approached.

"I think this is the worst idea you've ever had."

"That's unfortunate, because I've already contacted the museum."

"How do you know you can trust these people?"

"That's a fine thing to ask me, considering -"

"Considering what?"

"Considering what you -"

The scarred man knocked on the door. The voices halted, and then one called out, "Come on in."

The scarred man opened the door and gestured for Iruka to enter. Iruka walked into a cluttered office, finding an elderly man behind the desk and a middle-aged man with long black hair across the room. The scarred man closed the door behind them and leaned against it, blocking anyone else from exiting or entering. Without any regard for his audience, he pulled a small, well-worn paperback out of an interior pocket and flipped it open.

Pretending he hadn't heard anything, Iruka spoke. "Mr. Sarutobi? I'm Iruka Umino from Konoha City Art Museum."

"Yes, yes," the elderly man said, a smile breaking across his face. He got up to walk around his desk and take Iruka's hand in a firm shake. "Thank you for coming. Yes."

"This is?" asked the man with long black hair.

"I'm the assistant director of the museum and in charge of education."

"A teacher?" sniffed the man.

"This," Sarutobi gestured to the man across the room, "is an old colleague of mine, Orochimaru." He continued, "Iruka, the reason I contacted you is to ask if the Konoha City Art Museum would be interested in a semi-permanent loan of my family's art scrolls."

Iruka gaped. Originally designed to line a long corridor in the Sarutobi castle during the Momoyama Period, the collection was a series of 27 silk mounted scrolls, each depicting a different scene from a story. Painted on the silk were colorful battles, gorgeously rendered castles, lovers' meetings, tragic endings, the small figures amazingly life-like and discernable even through all this time. The collection was one of the greatest still in private hands.

"You see," Sarutobi continued, "I have art, but not the ability to maintain it." He looked wry. "The curse and the blessing of a long lineage."

"You probably don't remember, but the last time we spoke was almost ten years ago," Iruka said. "I was in graduate school - you very kindly allowed me to see your family scrolls and write about them in my master's thesis."

"I didn't forget your interest in my family's scrolls. That's why I thought of you and your museum. I've been following your career, my boy."

"Now, Sarutobi," said Orochimaru, silkily. "The Konoha City Art Museum is a fine institution, good for trips from schools and retiree homes, but it might not be the caliber of museum that is worthy of the scrolls. Do we know if the museum can maintain them properly?"

Iruka could feel the heat creeping up his face as Orochimaru continued.

"The only places that would be acceptable to me are the National Art Museum, perhaps the Fire Country Archives would be better. They have better resources and personnel. We already have people there - "

"I told you, Orochimaru, that I don't care about your contacts and your people," Sarutobi said irritably. "The City Museum is the one I want to leave the scrolls to. I want the scrolls to be a valuable addition to a collection, not just something they have in the dozens. I want them studied and I want them to be a legacy for Konoha, not disappear in the capital." He turned to Iruka. "This is where you come in. I know you already have an interest and a background in these scrolls and their history."

"It would be great, " Iruka blurted. Then he got a grip on himself, trying to think about what his director, Tsunade, would say. "It's a great honor," Iruka said, still enthusiastically. Carefully, he said, "I think we, the Konoha City Museum, would be very interested. But before I can take it to my director, I need to see them first."

"Certainly. I wouldn't offer anything that I couldn't put my name on. Hatake, if you could get the scroll in the green silk from the storage closet?"

Hatake returned with a long, slender satchel. Sarutobi opened it, pulled out a scroll, untied the elaborate silk rope that tied it closed and unrolled it. "What do you think, Iruka, eh? Is this worthy of putting my name on?"

As Sarutobi unrolled the scroll, Iruka's eyes got bigger and bigger. "It's - it's not - "

"It isn't?"

"Is it?" Iruka almost stuttered in his excitement.

"The Murder of Prince Saburo. I remember it was your favorite," Sarutobi said to Iruka, with the look of a professor indulging a favorite pupil.

Iruka hardly dared to breathe on the scroll unrolled in front of him. His eyes scanned the painted silk.

It wasn't one of the prizes of the collection, but Iruka still thought it was extraordinary. Even though it had been damaged by fire early in its life, the story still spoke to him. Oblivious party-goers and dancing girls gathered in one room, and the prince lay alone in the other. The prince's clothes lay strewn in golden splendor around his bedroom, upset furniture and spilled food and weapons were scattered across the floor as if there had been a struggle. An anxious pet monkey looked on from an upended table. All that were missing was the perpetrator. The prince's left side and upraised hand, lying on the floor at the bottom of the scroll, could be seen in the surviving corner.

"Why is it your favorite?" asked Orochimaru.

Self-conscious, Iruka replied, "I find it interesting. The missing parts make it seem like a mystery."

"You like mysteries, then?" Orochimaru leered. He turned to the silver-haired man. "Hatake - the education specialist likes mysteries."

Sarutobi said something vaguely chidding to Orochimaru, but Iruka stopped focusing on the conversation. He watched as Hatake lifted up his arm, shook it free of the sleeve and checked his watch. It wasn't the pristine whiteness of the French cuffs nor the tastefully neutral and doubtlessly expensive watch that caught Iruka's attention. It was the sliver of colorful tattoo that was revealed.

Beautiful, and just enough to know the artist was a master. Just enough to show that Hatake was no ordinary bodyguard. He was yakuza.

Of all the rotten...! Iruka wanted to howl. Dumped in a seedy part of town by a rude date in the middle of what must be a monsoon of mythic proportion, and he didn't have a phone. He barely knew where he was. Conceding defeat, Iruka ducked into the first shop he saw.

It turned out to be a bookshop. As Iruka entered, the portly cashier watched him with a jaundiced eye. With good reason, Iruka felt. The clientele seemed to specialize in oversized raincoats, leaving Iruka feeling exposed and oddly underdressed in his rain-soaked sweater vest and khakis. The books also seemed to coated in something just a little tacky. Moisture proofing? Iruka had the sneaking suspicion that the clientele, much like the books, would be best in some impermeable covering, regardless of the weather.

"You looking for something special?" the clerk asked.

Iruka asked to borrow the phone. He felt progressively foolish as he had to then ask to borrow the phone book, then ask the street location, and then finally, ask and relay the hilariously suggestive name of the store.

The bored-sounding voice on the other end had informed him that it could be up to half an hour before they could get him.

Sighing, Iruka hung up. He turned to the store's interior, thinking he could kill time while browsing. The collection turned out to be porn, in a truly astonishing collection of quantity and quality. Most of it homosexual. A quick run down revealed specialities that Iruka was familiar with, some he had a vague idea about, and some he had no idea existed.

He didn't want to seem like a pervert (as opposed to every other person in the place), so he hovered nervously over the small collection of general interest books. The few times he glanced up to check on the taxi, he noticed a red-haired man of medium build looking at him with what Iruka felt was undue attention. Iruka kept looking away, awkwardly. Finally, he saw that red-haired man leave with another man, heading toward the glowing lights of the love motel down the street.

Iruka nervously patted his empty pants pocket. He had to have been in the shop for close to half an hour - more than enough time for the taxi to arrive. Could they have just forgotten to pick him up? He sighed and moved a few steps, ending up in front of a rack labeled "Manly Romance." In a bid to look like he was going to buy something, he picked up a book with a violently puce cover, the picture of two men in lavender sparkly leotards entitled Icha Icha Ice Capades: A Jiraiya Mystery.

He felt, more than heard, someone press up close behind him and murmur hotly in his ear, "That's a good one." A large hand confidently rubbed Iruka's hip, sliding into his pants pocket. "I like mysteries, too."

Iruka whirled to face his molester. Above the lines of a designer trenchcoat, he saw brief confusion in a pair of mismatched eyes.

"Whoa!" Hatake exclaimed, holding his hands up in a sign of surrender.

"What're you doing here?" yelled Iruka.

"What do you think?" Hatake asked.

"Picking pockets?!" Iruka hollered. "I can't believe - "

Hatake looked over at the cashier. Iruka followed his line of sight. The clerk had gotten up from behind his desk, a baseball bat in his hand. "Let's go."

"Where we going?" asked Iruka.

"To have some tea."

"But - but I'm waiting for someone."

"All right," Hatake said, shrugging. "If you find Mr. Right in this porn shop, I'll pay for the wedding."

After a good long look at the other customers in the store in their raincoated motley, the sticky books, the cashier with bat still in hand, Iruka ran out of the shop. "Wait! Wait!"

Iruka followed Hatake down the street to a small tea shop. Iruka watched Hatake shift, ever so slightly, relaxing to a casual stance, the flicker of alert vanishing into a blank boredom as his eyes roved over the room. Hatake ordered some tea and sat at a table.

Iruka sat down, asking, "Do you go there often?"

"Only when I have to," Hatake said.

Iruka nodded, but had no real idea what he was nodding to. The tea came. Forced by habit, Iruka looked up and thanked the waitress.

"Very polite," Hatake commented.

"I was brought up that way," Iruka said.

"What're you doing there?"

Embarrassed, Iruka flushed. "I don't usually go to porn shops or love motels," he said. Hatake nodded, as if he were humoring Iruka. With this small opening, Iruka joked about his terrible date and being abandoned in front of the naughty bookstore. Hatake laughed, and Iruka felt absurdly pleased with himself for making that stony face crack open.

"So," Iruka asked, "How do you like working for Orochimaru."

The response was immediate and chilly. "I don't work for him."

Oookay. "So." Iruka shifted nervously.

Hatake seemed to take pity on Iruka's discomfort. "Tell me about the scrolls."

"What do you want to know?"

Hatake took a sip of tea. "What do you like about the scrolls?"

"The history is really interesting."

"I am not a student of history."

Iruka smiled, self-effacing. "There hasn't been a historic Prince Saburo. Not that anybody's been able to find, and there are only scraps of songs about him. So the scrolls are actually a kind of graphic novel of this lost story, you see? I wonder if it is a political piece. Some of the likenesses of the royals correspond with descriptions of the time." Iruka reached into a pocket and pulled out a draft pamphlet for the Sarutobi scrolls exhibit. He pointed to an image. "See this half-finished castle?"

"Okay."

"It's a real castle, and this seems to date the scroll pretty well, because of records other people have kept about its construction. Also, it seems like that artist didn't do any others, which is unusual. What is interesting is the access the artist had to all the locations illustrated in the scrolls, which seem to indicate that the artist knew a lot about his subject - the armor of the royals and the retainers, even some of the gardens are very specific. It's as if the artist was a member of the society he's painting. So if it's a high-level courtier with an axe to grind, that makes the story behind the story really interesting. We just don't know who that could be."

"I see," Hatake nodded, frowning. "I can see why you're in education."

Iruka flushed. "I know I can go on and on about it. It can get very boring for some people -"

"It's very interesting," Hatake said. "Thank you."

"How long have you worked for Sarutobi?"

"Long enough."

"You like your job?"

"Enough." Hatake said slowly, "It's not a very high-minded thing I do."

And because Iruka was always interested in why, he asked.

Hatake stared off into space. "Because I have certain ties and obligations, and I need to maintain them."

"What kind of loyalty-?"

"Hatake?" Iruka looked up to see an older blond man, fully covered in loose white clothing and a straw hat, approach the table. He was arrestingly attractive, with deep blue eyes and golden skin.

Hatake stood up abruptly and took the man's hands, deeply and reverently. "Oyabun," he said.

"Now, now," the man chided. "No longer."

"Sensei," Hatake said.

Iruka wondered for the briefest moment if what he felt just now is jealousy. Nah. That would be crazy. But there was something particularly familiar about the man. He couldn't shake it.

"Is your friend staying?" Sensei asked, looking at Iruka with open curiosity.

"I don't think so." Hatake pulled out his wallet and left a large bill on the table. Outsized, really, for the tea. "Good-bye, Iruka Umino."

Iruka arrived at work a bit later than usual - the evening had been a weird one. Beyond description, really. As he entered his office, he saw a pair of feet propped up on the far end of his desk. The offender had his back to Iruka, sitting backward on a tipped-back chair, a newspaper open in front of him.

"INTERNAL RIFT IN YAKUZA GANG!" screamed the headlines of Kotetsu's paper. "Gang violence up 30% over last year!"

Iruka kicked the leg from under Kotetsu as he passed by, unable to suppress a grin as Kotetsu, startled, yelped and flailed, the chair clattering as he fell backwards, the paper hitting him on the chest and spreading out on the floor. Iwashi and Izumo chortled.

"Don't read while on the job," Iruka reprimanded.

There was a knock on the door on their shared office space. Everybody looked up as Shizune, administrative assistant to the Director, peeked in.

"Hi, Shizune," said Izumo.

"Hey," said Shizune. "And hey, Iwashi."

"Oh, hi, Shizune."

"Hey, Shizune! Want a date?" hollered Kotetsu from his position on the floor.

"No, Kotetsu," Shizune replied, flatly. "I'm busy. And you should be, too."

"Aww," said Kotetsu, completely unaffected by Shizune's brush-off. "Can't you give a fellow a break?"

Iruka couldn't keep from smiling. "Kotetsu," he called, "You know Shizune won't be interested in you unless you're covered in oil paint."

Iwashi grinning, said, "Old oil paint. Nothing post-European Renaissance."

"You might be right," Kotetsu grumbled.

Shizune said, "Iruka, several boxes came for you this morning. If you could get the boxes out of the mailroom?"

"Yeah, let's get them," agreed Izumo.

Iruka was pleased when he saw the boxes were from Sarutobi. He had spent several months getting the exhibit together. He had worked with construction, education, publicity, even the merchandising branches of the museum to pull together all of the elements necessary for a good show. After that, the scrolls would be exhibited for a limited time, rotating through the display as their condition allowed. There had been some annoying interferences from Sarutobi's 'business associates' but Sarutobi seemed to have ended up handling it all well.

What irked Iruka most was that it seemed that the 'business associates' seemed to share the Director's prejudice that just because Iruka came up through the education department, he didn't know anything about art or art history.

And whatever had happened between him and Hatake, up to and including last night - Iruka tried to dismiss. Hatake was just somebody Iruka had met - a bodyguard or some kind of security. That was all. Nothing peculiar there. Just another gangster in Iruka's vast acquaintance of non-gangsters. Nothing at all he should take note of, regardless of how attractive Hatake might be.

Iruka pulled open the first scroll, eager to show it to Izumo and Kotetsu. The he frowned. That castle wasn't there the last time I looked at this scroll. Could he have remembered incorrectly, after spending the past several months looking at the original materials and creating educational materials from them?

"Izumo," Iruka asked, very quietly approaching. "Can you take a look at scroll 26 and tell me what the bottom right hand castle looks like?"

Izumo, Iwashi and Kotetsu bent forward and peered at the scroll. "It's a fully built castle."

"Right," Iruka said, pulling the prototype pamphlet from his pocket, "Now, look at this and tell me what's in this picture."

Izumo looked down at the limp pamphlet. "The castle is half-built."

"Now, let's go and have a look at the scroll again."

Kotetsu complained, "Really? Anybody can tell they're not the same thi-holy shit."

They were going to have to tell somebody. The four of them looked at each other in confusion, horror, and dread.

Tsunade, the head curator of the museum, raged. "What are you telling me? I just approved this! You're saying that what we have here is fake? FAKE?"

"Um," stuttered Izumo. Iwashi and Kotetsu huddled behind his wilting figure.

"Yes," said Iruka.

"This had better not be one of your little jokes, Iruka," she warned.

"No," said Iruka. He swallowed nervously.

Something of Iruka's worry must have communicated to Tsunade. She hit her intercom. "Shizune, call Ibiki in Security and tell him to meet me in Iruka Umino's office. Ask him if he knows any way the art could have been mixed with anything else - or if there could have been some shipping problem."

"And you - Iruka - double-check all the art in the exhibit, right after you take this scroll," she pointed to the offending item, "to Conservation. Ask them to do some tests to see what this is and make sure none of us is going crazy. Also, I want you to contact Sarutobi. Tell him what is going on."

"Hello?"

"Mr. Sarutobi? This is Iruka Umino, from the City Art Museum."

"Iruka - hello, hello! How are things going in the art install?"

"We've run into a problem."

Sarutobi, understandably, hit the roof. What was less understandable was what followed. He had demanded that Iruka come by to speak with Orochimaru. Today. And then he hung up.

Iruka stood in front of the house as Hatake opened the door.

"Hatake - it's me, Iruka. I've got a meeting with Mr. Sarutobi."

Hatake said, "He's not available."

"What're you talking about? I just spoke with him on the phone and he told me to come by."

"Hatake - " Ororchimaru came to the door. "Who is it?"

"It's Iruka Umino, from the City Art Museum. He's here to see Mr. Sarutobi."

Orochimaru turned to Iruka, staring at him as if he'd never seen him before. "Mr. Sarutobi is indisposed. He can't meet with anybody today."

Iruka slid his foot forward, stopping the door before it closed entirely. "Can he meet tomorrow? It's very important. His scrolls - "

Orochimaru gave Iruka the coldest, creepiest look he had ever had the misfortune to be on the receiving end of. "He will contact you when, and if, he can."

"Wait! Wait! -"

Hatake grabbed Iruka's arm and pushed him out of the doorway. Over his shoulder, he said, "I'll take care of this."

"Let me go!" Iruka protested, jerking at his arm.

"Let me escort you to where you need to go," Hatake said, still holding on firmly. Iruka knew that it wasn't really an offer. They rode down the elevator in silence, all the way down to the basement garage.

"I'll be fine," Iruka grunted. Hatake finally relinquished his grip.

"Do you know what's wrong with Sarurobi?" asked Iruka.

Hatake didn't answer. He gestured to a black sedan. "Why don't you get in?"

Iruka swallowed, suddenly nervous. "I can find a bus, thanks."

Hatake's voice chilled. "Get in."

Iruka got in.

Hatake whipped out his dark shades before he started up the car. It was only after they were in traffic that he spoke. "Don't believe everything you see, or hear. There's more than meets the eye."

"Like layers of an onion?" snorted Iruka.

"There's always something underneath the underneath."

"Like a worm under the shadow under a rock?"

Hatake shrugged. "Take it as you like."

"Is that a warning?"

Hatake didn't answer. Finally, Iruka blurted, "Did you know anything about the forgeries?"

Hatake blinked. Very slowly, he said, "No."

"Can you tell me where Sarutobi is?"

"I can't be seen to be helping you," Hatake said. He pulled up in front of the museum, right under the "No Parking, No Unloading Zone" sign. He reached over and unclipped Iruka's seat belt.

Iruka was barely clear of the car when Hatake drove off.

"I just don't understand it," Iruka said, sitting with his co-workers in the museum cafeteria.

"What?" asked Izumo.

Iruka explained about Sarutobi, Orochimaru and Hatake's reaction. He couldn't, for some reason, bring himself to tell them about Hatake's statement about being seen to help.

"Well, Iruka, everybody knows you like mysteries. Why don't you find out?" Kotetsu joked.

"Because everyone knows the mysteries inherent in a job like museum educator has everything to do with fighting," Izumo tsked.

"That's right. I fight crime in between the glittering charity galas, filling out importation paperwork while meeting double agents and fighting evil supervillains," Iruka laughed grimly.

"You got any change for the coffee machine?" Iwashi asked.

"Some lunch," Izumo commented. "You asked us to lunch and then you ask for us for money."

"Yeah, some lunch date," humphed Kotetsu. He nudged Iruka. "Hey, you got any change?"

Iruka obligingly dug around in his jacket pocket for some change. Amidst the coins, he found a stray slip of crumpled paper.

"You got a number?" Kotetsu asked, surprised. "Man, some guys get all the luck. You go out for a meeting and come back with a phone number. I get asked to lunch and have to mooch around for some loose change for vending machine coffee."

"Yeah," Izumo said. "And then you hit up your friends. You mooch."

Iruka frowned. What number was this? Did Hatake slip it into his pocket when he was unclicking that seat belt?

Before Iruka could register what was happening, Kotetsu reached over and grabbed it. Iruka instinctively raised and lifted his arm, digging Kotetsu in the side. Kotetsu doubled over, groaning.

"Sorry," Iruka said. "I really didn't mean -"

"Yeah, whatever," Kotetsu said.

"Guys," said Izumo, frowning.

Then Kotetsu grabbed the paper again and passed it to Iwashi. Iwashi got out his phone and dialed. Iruka snatched the paper back and stuck it in a pocket.

"It's the Paradise Bathhouse," Iwashi said, hanging up.

"Kinky," commented Kotetsu.

"Kinky?" asked Iwashi. "Why?"

"Because it's where all the gangsters hang out. Gangsters probably like the rough stuff. Don't you know?"

Izumo sighed. "I want to know how you know."

"Everybody knows," said Kotetsu.

"Let's ask," Iwashi challenged.

"Iruka - " Shizune said, hustling through the cafeteria.

"Hey, Shizune," sang Kotetsu, eyes lighting up. "Do you know what the Paradise Bathhouse is?"

Shizune blinked. "I've told you over and over I don't want to go on a date with you."

At the smug looks his friends gave each other, Kotetsu protested. "It's in all the papers. The gang wars. Come on, guys. Everybody knows."

"We don't all read the tabloids," Iwashi said.

"It's real news," Kotetsu protested. "There's an informant and police are quoted and everything."

Shizune rolled her eyes. 'I just don't have time for this." She pointed at Iruka. "You. Tsunade wants to see you."

"When?" Iruka asked.

"Now."

"Never mind what I said about luck," said Kotetsu.

Tsunade's grim expression boded ill when Shizune delivered him to the Director's office. Also in the office, looking trapped, was Shikamaru, assistant conservator to the museum.

"Where's your boss?" Iruka asked Shikamaru.

"Knows better than to show up here," Shikamaru retorted.

"News that bad?"

"Worse." Shikamaru's normally dour expression turned downright glum. "We did a quick scan of the collection. Turns out half of them might be fakes," he said.

"What?!" shouted Tsunade. "That bad?"

Shikamaru winced. "Up to three-quarters."

"You're joking," said Tsunade.

"I got better things to do than joke about this," Shikamaru said. "I'm hesitant to do any tests that might destroy any of the material, but it was pretty easy to tell the paint was all wrong. Too modern."

"How modern?" Iruka asked.

"We could talk about the use of synthetics in the paints, or the heavy metals and their origins in the pigments," Shikamaru said, "but I'm sure you know all about it."

"I'm going to have to talk to the police," groaned Tsunade. "I don't want any press - this is bad enough already. The money we've spent on construction, materials and publishing - " She cradled her head in her hands, looking as desperate for a drink as Iruka felt. "I've been a museum curator for 30 years and I've never had this kind of thing happen." She sighed. "Can you go the house, see if you can see Sarutobi?"

"Tomorrow?" asked Iruka hopefully.

"Today."

"Already tried today."

"Tomorrow," Tsunade conceded. "Early."

Iruka arrived at an hour where he felt sure there would be someone. It was too early to go on errands, too late to have just arrived home, even from a busy night. After knocking on the door, peeking into the window and even hoisting himself up to have a look into the small garden, Iruka had to concede defeat. Nobody was at the house. It was locked up tight.

"You here for something special?" a low male voice asked.

"I'm not - " Iruka started heatedly, rounding toward the speaker. Then he halted in surprise.

An older blond man with blue eyes, dressed from chin to ankles in white and wearing wide-brimmed hat looked expectantly at him. Hatake's teacher.

"I was waiting for somebody," Iruka said, lamely.

"What a coincidence. I was waiting for someone as well. Why don't you come with me?" The man turned away. Iruka followed, and they went a few blocks and rounded a corner. Iruka nearly ran into the glass window of a strip club that had rose abruptly in front of him.

Iruka wondered about the company he was keeping, the kind he was becoming familiar with, that loved the seedy element. At least, the place wasn't open. The early morning mist was starting to burn off and display the sad, tawdry remains of last night's festivities scattered about the street.

"Interesting, isn't it? How the old and new are set together? And yet underneath it all are the old vices, the old crimes," the man said. They came to a door back beyond the entrance to the strip club.

Iruka followed the man up a long, narrow flight of stairs and down a dark corridor, stopping in front of a beaten, badly painted door. The man got out a set of keys, unlocked the door and walked into the room, leaving the door open. Uncertain of what else to do, Iruka walked through and closed the door behind him.

The blond man shed his shoes and immediately went to the small kitchenette in the corner. "Tea?"

"Please," Iruka answered, looking around. There was very little furniture in this white painted room; only a knee-height table and several sitting cushions on some worn tatami. The walls were covered with paper of all sizes and colors in no particular order. Unable to help himself, Iruka approached the paper, and realized they were bits of drawings, sketches, color studies.

Suddenly, the pictures went white. Iruka looked up, squinting; the other man had pulled the curtains open and early morning light flooded the room. Then he went back to the tea.

Iruka focused and saw that the images looked very familiar. They looked, in fact, almost exactly like the images on the counterfeit Sarutobi scrolls, right on down to the completed castle with its gardens. He looked up to ask a question and saw that the tea had been served.

He took a seat across from the man at the table. Deliberately, the man lifted up his cup and went through the motions of turning it around and round. Iruka's eyes were drawn to the man's left hand. Specifically, the missing top joints of the pinky and ring finger.

And then Iruka knew where he had seen this man's face before. Not only was he the one Hatake had met up with previously, he had been featured in any number of newspaper features, most of them pertaining to his recent retirement. This was Minato Namikaze, one of the most notorious yakuza leaders in the past half-century.

"Mr. Namikaze - "

"Call me Seishi - Minato died when I left that life. I'm a tattoo artist now."

"Why are you showing me this?" Iruka asked.

"The Scarecrow told me that you might be interested," Seishi said.

Iruka frowned. "The Scarecrow?"

"Kakashi Hatake. He's the Scarecrow because he's always alone in the field," said Seishi. "Hasn't worked with anyone - not since the death of a friend years ago. That is my fault. I need to make amends to him, for everything I owe him."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"Haven't you ever thought that you have many talents, many identities?" Seishi asked. "I think I should have been an artist, a teacher, but because of the limited options available to me, I became a gangster. Now, I can see the things I have ordered men to do in the name of a kind of order - I am sorry and I would like to correct some of that if possible."

"Why would Hatake do this? Is he doing this for you?" Iruka burst out.

"Everything we do in this life leaves a mark. It shows up on the body." Seishi pulled up his sleeve, showing part of a wing of a great phoenix. "Sometimes we mean it to, like a tattoo. Sometimes, it does not." He dropped the sleeve. "But the worst things are those that leave marks on the soul. For men like Hatake, for me. And perhaps, for you."

Seishi smiled. "It has been good meeting you." He stood, signaling the end of the session. "I shall tell the Scarecrow."

Shizune rushed into the office. "I can't get a hold of Mr. Sarutobi," she burst out. "Nobody knows where he is," she said. "The police have been calling and they want to speak with everybody who has had contact with him in the last couple of months."

Iruka held his breath, remembering the feel of Hatake's hand on his hip, and in his pocket, and the slip of paper that sat in his desk drawer. "I think I can find him." At least, I can find somebody who might know where he is.

Sweaty, irritated, Iruka sighed. He had watched every man leave in anticipation of the closing of the bathhouse. He sat up from his slumped-over position. He didn't want to spend the next twenty years haunting saunas across the city to find one silver-haired yakuza who might know something about some counterfeit art scrolls and their missing owner. He bet a million dollars that this whole chase was futile. And he himself was a fool.

Iruka saw somebody move, somebody he hadn't noticed previously, as they had been hidden behind the large central heating pillar. The man lifted a towel-covered head and shoulders, and through the steam-filled air, Iruka saw the shine of a red iris.

Hatake stood, the white cloth sliding off his shoulders, revealing a fox hunting a snake across a background of swirling cherry blossoms.

"I need your help," Iruka said.

Hatake raised a single eyebrow. And then he looked down at himself, the single small towel he held cupped against his privates. "Can this wait until I get dressed? Or is this something that has to do with the way we keep meeting, Iruka?"

And then the world blew up around them.

Konoha International Airport has several private rooms available to those who need them. For a price. Such a room is currently the meeting place of several men, some of whom are carrying large cases. Many of those men are large. Almost all of them have signs of multi-colored tattoos about their necks and wrists.

"Ah, Itachi, welcome to Konoha," said Orochimaru.

A young man with tremendous bags under his eyes greeted Orochimaru. It wasn't everyday that the scion of the Uchiha syndicate meets with a boss of another.

"Would you like to see the scrolls?" Orochimaru beckoned to one of his men to bring forth a case. Then he himself unrolled the bundle on the conference-sized table next to them. "What do you think, Itachi?" asked Orochimaru.

Itachi turned toward one of his associates, an ordinary-looking man with shaggy brown hair and thick-lensed glasses that distorted watery blue eyes. "What do you think?"

Orochimaru's eyes narrowed as he looked at the man. "You look familiar - "

"He's my specialist. You told me I could bring one, make sure you weren't passing me fakes. You don't trust me? Or him?" Itachi coughed. "Orochimaru, if you don't want this deal - "

"Of course I do, Itachi."

Itachi, bored, said, "Let's proceed."

The man looked nervously at the scrolls, and after some time, said, "These are the originals."

Itachi looked toward one of his associates. "I think we can take this as payment for the services we have rendered you."

"Excellent," Orochimaru said. They shook hands, the cases changing hands easily.

Then the door burst open and a group of policemen, uniformed and not, ran into the room. With a minimum of fuss, they arrested everybody in Orochimaru's group.

"What is going on here?" roared Orochimaru, his hands handcuffed. A grim police officer began informing him of his rights.

Hatake strolled towards him and drawled, "Looks like you're under arrest."

"How - who? You're supposed to be - "

"Dead?" Hatake gave a half shrug. "When you set that bomb in the bathhouse, you went too far. I went to the police with everything I knew. I mean, everything I hadn't told them already."

"I thought you were the leak," Orochimaru spat. He turned to the brown-haired man, who he caught in the act of taking off his glasses and delicately pinching the the blue contacts out of his eyes. His eyes widened in recognition. "YOU!"

Iruka blinked away the excessive tearing the contacts caused. "Yes. Me. They needed someone who could verify the scrolls. And since you thought I was dead, this seemed a reasonable gamble."

Hatake said, "The authorities in the capital have released Sarutobi by now, so there's no point in contacting your men there."

Looking dumbfounded, Orochimaru asked, "How?"

A policeman grasped Orochimaru and pulled him out of the room. "You'll have plenty of time to think about it," he said.

Itachi eyed the newly healed scar where Hatake's left pinky used to be. "Whatever we owe each other, that debt is settled now." He and his men left the room.

Iruka and Hatake spent a awkwardly looking at each other. It had been a month of close coordination between the two of them, Hatake's contacts in the Uchiha syndicate and the Konoha police.

Hatake said, conversationally, "It was only dumb luck that Sarutobi wanted The Murder of Prince Saburo. Most of the scrolls had already been replaced with counterfeits. Sensei said the burns were too difficult to do exactly."

"Why couldn't you tell me this all before we got blown up?" Iruka asked.

"I couldn't risk Sarutobi, or Sensei. I may be - may have been - a gangster, but I'm not scum."

"What about the art?"

"I was waiting for you to determine how much of the art was fake."

"Why?"

"I've been following the art, and its holders for several years now. I've been in too long and deep to tell anyone, to jeopardize my position with the syndicate."

"You were willing to let the art disappear?"

"I had to take the risk. I had to know who was taking it and where it would end up. Itachi was willing to play - if we overlooked some of his other activities. The internal rift of the syndicate worked in favor of the operation. Orochimaru was on the losing side and needed the money, but couldn't alert other people to what he was doing."

"What I don't understand is why Orochimaru wouldn't have just stolen the scrolls directly," Iruka said.

"Because Sarutobi would have noticed, and they wanted access to his connections as well as his assets. When he did notice, they had to silence him because of the other deals they had going on. They were using the scrolls as collateral for drugs, but the main body of the organization was against the drug deals."

As the adrenaline of the situation began to ebb, Iruka sighed. This day seemed like a long time coming.

"You saved my life," Iruka said to Hatake. He would never forget Hatake's abrupt movements after their meeting in the bathhouse - a sixth sense that had caused him to shove Iruka down and under one of the large concrete benches as fast as possible. Then Hatake had wedged in next to him just when the building exploded.

Hatake shrugged it off. "Hey, you want to go for dinner?" He stuck his hands in his pockets, like a shifty teen.

Surprised, Iruka could only nod. If after all of this, Hatake could find him good company, well, then. He'd had bad dates before. This certainly couldn't be any worse, and it might even be better. "As long as we don't end up in a dirty book shop."

"Done." The corner of Hatake's mouth lifted. "Call me Kakashi, won't you?"

"Sure," Iruka grinned. And never, never, never would he forget the sight of a totally naked Hatake emerging from the rubble of the bathhouse; like a piece of art coming out of a fire, largely unscathed.

END

A/N -

oyabun - literally "foster parent" is the yakuza version of Mafia boss. - wikipedia

The cutting of a finger is called yubitsume and "a form of penance or apology. Upon a first offence, the transgressor must cut off the tip of his left little finger and give the severed portion to his boss. Sometimes an underboss may do this in penance to the oyabun if he wants to spare a member of his own gang from further retaliation." wikipedia

"In Japan, the rule is to cover your genitals with a small hand-towel. No clothes other than that. To wear clothes is pretty rude I think, or at least strange." - Straight Dope discussion boards