Chapter 5

Finding the compound hadn't been difficult.

Trusting him not to intervene, Iruka had not kept his destination a secret. Now that he was here, Kakashi looked down upon the little enclosure of buildings and frowned with disquietude. It was nearly deserted. There was no sentry at all, and though he could feel the faint pulsing charka signatures of people inside the various structures, there was no wariness at all in them. This illusion of complacently made the jounin uneasy.

No self-respecting ninja base would keep their compound so slackly defended, far less one that was currently holding a prisoner. There had to be something to this that he couldn't see. All of his senses warned him to stay away, that this was wrong, wrong, wrong. But.

But Iruka was there somewhere, amidst that collection of little presences. He turned to face the main building, three stories high with scrolling rafters. A veritable mansion. It oozed sinister. If a detainee was anywhere, it would be there.

"I'm coming, Iruka," Kakashi whispered. Then he peeled off his hitai-ate to awaken the swirling sharingan and abandoned the boughs.

There was no resistance to his intrusion when he entered the house. He'd searched with excruciating care for the sensors he'd expected to be crowded in every niche, but there were none. There were no traps, no sentries, no sound.

He moved like a vengeful spirit down the wide passageways, so fleetly that he was like a flicker in the periphery of an eye. His muscles rolled beneath his skin and his mind raced ahead, watchful. In that moment, he was everything his life-time of training had precipitated – predator, a precision instrument, savage.

But on a mission of a paradoxical kind. He was here to save, but he dared anyone to challenge him along the way. He'd be moving too fast to even feel the heat of their blood.

He'd just rounded another corner when the aberration stuck him. Wildly, his sharingan pulsed and swirled, and Kakashi pressed a hand to his forehead, trying to get a grip on what he felt. It was…an amalgamation, a murky, pulsing nebula of charka from different sources, though, incredibly, centered on one place. One person? No. Such a thing was as impossible, like having two hearts.

There wasn't time to come to any firm conclusion, however, for even as he wondered the abyss opened up and answered him frankly. It came like a disembodied voice, almost femininely high and cracking with an impression of age:

"Well, so you've finally made it."

Automatically, the Konoha nin sunk more deeply into a crouch, his body tense with waiting even as his eyes flickered, seeking his quarry. A chuckle echoed softly in the chamber, amused by his disorientation. It was almost out of pity that the creature stepped out of the shadow, a bent-over form swathed in an overlarge lab coat.

The man greeted Kakashi, "There you are. I was beginning to wonder if you would come after all, the way you lingered outside my wall."

Hunched shoulders rose above a clearly misshapen body. One eye was a watery blue, but a bulb of shinning flesh protruded from the other socket, hollow and white. A Hyuuga eye; it couldn't be mistaken by anyone who'd ever seen one, even mounted so unnaturally. Patches of skin in differing colors seemed crudely sewn to his body, and there were nodes protruding like tumors from the back of his neck. He was a melted tuber of mottled flesh and visible veins. It was horrifying; there was no more appropriate word to describe it.

Repulsed, Kakashi involuntarily recoiled, revulsion dawning across the planes of his face.

"Does my appearance startle you?" The creature gave a low, rattling laugh. "Yes, there are those that revile me. But I am actually quite a beautiful example of human engineering." His moist nostrils heaved. "I've been waiting for you."

The jounin twitched reflexively, and he continued, "Oh, don't be so surprised. I knew you before you even stepped foot in this place. You shine stronger than any concealment could hide, at least from me. I'm more interested in what you're doing here. Surely you're not after that lamb in my workshop."

Workshop? Iruka was here. This man had him.

If possible, the mass of a man's smile widened, splitting his head like an over ripened fruit. "I'm Bukakkou Ookami," he introduced himself. "And you are here for him. How perplexing. Would you like to tell me why?"

Kakashi remained stony, flexing his muscles as he took in this new foe. The sharingan whirled madly, darting. Bukakkou gazed at it complacently, until finally he sighed and gestured with a hand as he maneuvered his misshapen body back down the hall.

"I wouldn't have expected the great Hatake Kakashi to broadcast so much. But if you're so eaten up with worry for him, then come along. This is bound to end unpleasantly for you, but you might as well be content with this part of your mission at least."

Everything in his body revolted the notion of following those waddling steps further into this elaborate noose. Every instinct he had ever cultivated screamed dissent. But he also sensed that this creature had not lied to him yet, and that Iruka really was cloistered here somewhere down that hall. So he went, his legs moving heavily. After the wolf.

Bakakkou lead them down the channel of wood into the structure's heart, then through a reinforced metal door, strange in it's ancient frame. All along the way Kakashi searched for others, scanned for eyes. None. He was alone with this man.

"Where are your men?" he spoke for the first time. It was just one thing that was deeply wrong. The report had estimated at least two dozen, but even the little lights outside didn't account for that number.

Bukakkou shrugged one sloped shoulder, so that his veined, mottled skin stretched. "Not many have a stomach for my work," he explained, and coughed a harsh sound that might have held some raw amusement. "There are a few nin here; three, actually, all mercenary. The rest are servants, men without much future. Criminals, debtors, the disturbed and deviant. For little enough pay they stay by me without knowing what they truly support. And I am generous with my specimens and always share. Indulging their depravity is cheap."

The man lead him down a final corridor, sheeted with metal. At its end, the corridor opened into a large workroom, filled with machinery. Metal tools lined its walls like disembodied teeth. And damp, it was damp in here. Kakashi noticed the stark contrast from the outside immediately.

"Ah, here we are. My cubiculum." Bakakkou spread his stunted arms in an almost welcoming gesture. "I have been transformed behind these walls, and so have many others." His voice died away in the expanse as though swallowed. However, amidst the immensity was one anomaly.

Faintly, Kakashi heard the sound of labored breathing.

At room's furthest end, there was a gunnery smelted to the floor beneath a harsh overhead light. Trancelike, Kakashi moved toward it, only dimly aware that the beat of his own heart was filling the soundless room, overwhelming even the terrible, gurgling breaths.

Bukakkou had no such qualms about approaching the table, which had all the look and feel of an alter meant for sacrifice. He checked a chart impartially. "Two more seizures in just the last three hours. Oh dear. That isn't good." He addressed the still body. "We may not have much hope of finishing your program."

Kakashi's eyes enveloped the person who lay helplessly attached to the smooth metallic surface, held stationary by heavy straps. The body was tense, eyes sealed closed, and he sounded as though he were swallowing air rather than inhaling it. Drowning.

Iruka.

Bakakkou spoke, "The truth of it is that there wasn't much to gain with this one – nothing to amputate at all! It was a shame, but we did find out some interesting things about the No. 76 serum, didn't we, my lamb?" He turned then to Kakashi, and made a helpless gesture. "I have so little raw material these days. I have to be careful. And this one nearly killed me! Can you imagine?"

Kakashi could. He knew Iruka.

"I have appreciated his company," Bukakkou went on, almost conciliatorily. Kakashi's rage rose bright between them, and Bukakkou cocked his head, the protruding eye gleaming grotesquely. "What? Would you like him back?"

"What are you?" Kakashi demanded, though his mind had already supplied an answer: Monster, a true abomination. He felt sorry he had ever having bestowed such an underserved title upon Iruka's clone.

"I'm a scientist. Someone who has improved human life," the man answered him with complete sincerity, even as he stared out of his soulless, drooping white eye that didn't rotate, blink, or cry. "Under my knife have come many powerful nin of many nations. I've transplanted muscle, bone. I've dug the very channels of charka out of people's bodies! Oh, not for power. Power is a construction of the weak-minded. For knowledge, for improvement."

He finished, somehow contorting his grotesque body into a half-bow. "I take the best of them. I am their compilation."

The art of Ninjutsu was obsessed with the body; its physical condition, its limitations, its pathways and secrets. Bloodlines and blood limits. Training, supplements, and the living charka. That it consumed so many with a fanatical need to butcher and exploit in the name of research and advancement wasn't surprising. But it made Kakashi ill to see nature so contorted.

Kakashi's revulsion must have been clear, because Bakakkou threw his shriveled hand out, puncturing the air with a long, knotty finger. "You have no right to judge me," the scientist burbled, high and rasping. "You, Sharingan Kakashi, who bares an Uchiha eye. Transplanter. Hypocrite. We are not so different."

Kakashi's mismatched vision moved beyond the bloated horror to the cicada-shell body curled on the steel surface. Bound, broken apart. And held down by those stained, strained constraints. His heart palpitated wildly with horror and nausea seeing the physical evidence of what had been done to Iruka. He thought, 'No, I am not like you.'

He made a determined movement towards the table, but was stopped by the sudden presence of Bakakkou directly between them. He was surprisingly fast. Almost regretfully, the scientist shook his head, "I'm afraid that won't do. I've allowed you to see him, but neither of you are leaving here. Imagine what I could cut out of you."

The copy-nin's anger had for a long time been welling up from deep down, like a reservoir of bubbles at the bottom of a kettle ready to boil in an instant. His growl drew from this deep, explosive well of righteous fury as he snarled, "You've made a mistake."

This man had taken his partner, committed unspeakable tests upon him, and now left him on that gurney as though death were waiting nearby. He stood there, baring his teeth in some parodiable grin, as though chipping at the foundation of nature was something to be taken lightly, as though he were unconnected to his crimes. All of this he had hitherto done with immunity, but no more.

Kakashi spread his arms like justice unfurling its wings. Pale in the dim light, he must have seemed ethereal, like a ghost and just as insensitive to bargaining or excuses. His hands flashed with metal.

With the façade of one completely unimpressed, Bakakkou watched his adversary rise to confrontation. Unflinchingly, he met the roving red sharingan piercing him hatefully, and warned, "This will kill you. Better to submit, and I'll take away the pain."

Kakashi retorted fiercely, "Better to die now than to waste away in pieces, pinned to your table."

"Still conflicted about him, are we?" And the scientist still seemed genuinely surprised. "How sentimental you have turned out to be. But don't worry. While the gurgles and writhing they do close to death is always distressing, it means he hasn't much longer to suffer." He cocked his head. "Does that comfort you?"

A furious cry flew from the copy-nin's lips, and he launched himself at his adversary, releasing his handful of jagged edges. They whistled like the death they were, but only to embed themselves in the floor. Bakakkou moved backward with an agility his shape beguiled. Yet even so, Kakashi was already behind him, a charka reinforced knee heading straight for the creature's distorted neck.

Unfortunately, breaking Bakakkou in half would not be so easy.

In a swirl of white coat, the creature turned, capturing Kakashi's intended blow with the palm of one meaty hand. The gnarled knuckles tightened around the bone of his leg as Kakashi's eyes marginally widened with incomprehension; even blocked his blow should have crushed his combatant's hand.

Hissing a soft, almost patronizing laugh, the man informed him, "I have engineered this body from the sturdiest shinobi on this earth. I have reforged my own charka, reformed by own joints. So press upon me with your petty, inborn strength. But I suggest another route, hm?"

His last words were accompanied by a shove of such great force that Kakashi's body was hurled towards the far wall. Instinctively, the jounin redirected his momentum, flexing his knees to take the brunt of the impact. Around him, their field seemed barren of options. There was no earth here for him to manipulate; the world was metal and varnished wood. It was large, but not large enough to take full advantage of his speed.

Meanwhile Bakakkou seemed to move without moving. His charka burned Kakashi's senses with the panorama of alternating current. The sociopath really had transplanted other channels. Even as he realized this, there was a roll of foreign charka. Kakashi's head throbbed with it, and he suddenly realized that blood was oozing from his left eye socket. It burned, blurring his vision.

"Have you heard of the Ikanoborifrom cloud?" Bakakkou inquired, his arms moving in strange, willowy patterns. "They use their hands to push the air. Their hands and spirit."

The firmament responded in a whirl, an incredible drawing up of the air in a gushing, cyclical rotation around the contorted scientist. It slipped past Kakashi's cheeks with edges, sharp enough to draw blood. He tasted it on his lips as the skin split from the sudden change of pressure.

In an effort to keep himself from being tossed into the air, he directed much of his charka to his feet, but even so they were slipping. He'd never seen such a hurricane of control. His sharingan buzzed, but he made no attempt to copy it. He could sense that this was more than just a technique. Transplantation. Amputation. There was a physical element. Shinobi from Cloud had died for it.

Bakakkou cackled like a madman, his flighty, inconsistent voice carried over the pervading din. The wind wailed and he beckoned it closer, flaring out his lab coat so that his thick, knotted body could be vaguely seen, an amorphous sack of flesh and surgical scars.

"Are you ready, Konoha?" He called, a ringing whine over the mixing currents of air.

The attack came like a expulsion of breath – warm and cold and smelling like flesh and human bodies and hidden places. It lashed at the arms Kakashi threw in front of his face, fissuring them with ribbons of blood. Driven back, he lost his breath in the cone of propellant, rush, and noise. It rent his clothes and clubbed his ears. There was no where to run away. It enveloped the whole room.

With incredible willpower, Kakashi reached for his hip pouch. Outracing or outranging his creature seemed impossible, so he would accomplish this with a more archaic method: he would drive a blade through the cords of his neck or deep into one of his larger arteries. But in the panorama of sound and the sting of his already injured eyes, Kakashi had lost sight of Bakakkou. One moment he stood there with his washed-out blue eye watery and wild. And then…

When doom descended upon him, Kakashi barely felt it. He didn't have time to even arch his back or rotate his head, and then there it was, the press of two fingers. A mere tap on the ridge of his spine.

It was like being stung with static electricity, a bite of briefest pain – then nothing.

His hair stirred wildly, driven by the continued current of air, but every living nerve in his body was in a rigor, frozen in a paralysis that, struggle as he might, he could not break.

"That uncomfortable feeling you noticed was the sensation of the synapses in your brain switching off," Bakakkou explained at his back. "Your legs, your arms – they are sending messages to your mind, but they aren't being received. You may feel a slight pressure."

And suddenly Kakashi did feel it, the vice around his chest, the sudden feeling that he was trying to breath buried under a pile of stones. He physically felt his heart pounding in great, deliberate, slowing measures. Even now his vision spotted white; he gasped, gagged.

"Yes, your heart too," the scientist oozed, his curved nails pointing as he prepared a final blow. "A pity, you'd have made a beautiful subject to take apart, but then, we can't always have what we want, can we?"

Kakashi was a strangling flame, a dying moth. His heart was being squeezed, his vessels, his body stalling.

Bakakkou raised his hand, murmuring, "A sharingan from a non-Uchiha. Won't I be famous…"

Yet even as the finishing blow arched downward, Bakakkou was suddenly driven sideways by a fist of water that materialized out of thin air with a crack of forming ice. Kakashi's head snapped up, and he gasped like a landed fish. Stiffly, his limbs moved, and wonderingly he following swirling crimson to the source of the faint burst of trembling charka. His breath caught when he realized who had saved him.

There at the far side of the room was the third living being among them. His straining hand trembled, but incredibly, Iruka had worked his way onto one elbow, his palm extended. Barely conscious, he faltered, lips bleeding where his gritted teeth had punched through.

Seeing him awake was like oxygen enlivening Kakashi's muscles. How good it was so see those brown eyes, even ringed with so much pain. The chuunin was alive enough to fight. Fierce Iruka-sensei.

Bakakkou was not so pleased. Fists clinched, he squealed with outrage, "You are a finished project!" It was alarming to see his blotchy face turn livid, teeth glinting. Then, with a eruption of spite, he belched lethal fire towards his errant specimen. Iruka was still restrained, helpless, unable to do anything but watch it come.

Kakashi's hands formed the signs without thinking. Rain, he thought, and the world came apart.

In an immeasurable instant, all the moisture in the enormous room, every vapor, every trickle of water was drawn from the humid air like a tide of ending. It roared, flowering upward in a horizontal pane with Kakashi's guiding charka, a crashing curtain that drew itself down before the chuunin. The flames hit it with a tremendous hiss, just long enough to envelop them in a great plume of steam, and then it was water around their ankles, a leftover flood.

Bakakkou shrieked, eye bulging. Veins protruded. The pink weal of a mouth split down the side of his head, and Kakashi realized suddenly that he was tormented by the sudden complete dryness of the air. His nostrils were red as flares, his natural eye red with burst vessels. He flailed at an enemy he could not fight.

Kakashi didn't give him the opportunity to reorient.

A sudden crackle of a electricity was born among the remaining incredible combination of dry and flood. It was chidori and a rain, concurrent forces. Like a hammer of justice, Bakakkou felt the decent. Then he was nothing but a crackling mass of burnt flesh, and behind him the wall laid in an equally indistinguishable rubble of destroyed wood and twisted metal.

Exhausted to his bones, his head throbbing, Kakashi spat over the corpse of an enemy he had hated as he rarely did. He had been as bad as Orochimaru, if ultimately less dangerous. He was almost even more perverse: a mediocre horror.

Turning, he lurched towards the end of the room. "Iruka," he called when he was close enough to be heard. Reaching out, he pressed his damp, clammy hand against his partner's forehead. Weakly, he pleaded, "Iruka."

It was like a hesitating incoming tide, those eyes. Sluggishly they parted, revealing roving brown that seemed to hardly know where they were. Slowly, they focused on him.

"Hey," the jounin greeted him. His insides twisted at the expression of evident, staggering pain he could sense. The incomprehension was almost worse. But Iruka did not disappoint him. The haze cleared, and recognition burned then between them.

Iruka's face twisted with emotion as he formed the words, "Have you even heard of emotional detachment?"

Kakashi's laugh was a harsh and involuntary thing. He smiled with his whole face, both glad and sad. He retorted, "I did try it once, but it didn't work for me."

Iruka nodded, and the creases of his eyes were wet with moisture. Hoarsely, he admitted, "I'm glad you came."

Kakashi liked to visit Iruka in the hospital. The teacher couldn't get away from him, and it was amusing to watch him writhe helplessly in embarrassment and indignation when Kakashi got to the really juicy parts of Ichi Ichi Paradise v.08: Schoolteacher Scandal! It was hard to imagine why. He'd often heard that it was kind to read to invalids.

Naruto was another frequent visitor, after the security clearance had been lifted and the teacher had been moved from the depressing underground intelligence compound to a regular room. He brought pork ramen and armfuls of wildflowers with spines on them. And he castigated Kakashi endlessly when they ran into one another: "Quit being so mean."

Iruka, for his part, seemed to be taking the whole process in stride. He had technically failed his mission, very nearly died, and had spent much of his early recovery being interrogated. However, this seemed to be much in the way of things, as he had confided to Kakashi under heavy sedation.

"This happens," he'd said, still wheezing at that point. He'd said, "It's okay. This happens."

It had sort of made Kakashi want to destroy something.

That he had stuck around brought some attention, most notably from Konoha's Head of Intelligence and Iruka's direct superior. When Iruka was finally being transferred out to the regular hospital, Ibiki had stopped by to supervise (read, loom) while the chuunin was discharged, standing near Kakashi. The jounin remembered the conversation vividly:

"You've been lingering, Kakashi."

The copy-nin answered the challenge. "I have."

The taller man shifted. He was an imposing figure, and few could claim to have the slightest comprehension of his nature. He'd asked, "Has Iruka-sensei told you that I've known him since he was…I suppose, fourteen?"

"No."

The interrogator surprised him then. He said, "He could use a good friend, Kakashi. Sometimes the most beloved are also the ones most overlooked. You should be careful, though. We're all temporary."

Information and a warning. It seemed very like Ibiki.

However, Kakashi had already decided. He'd said, "I'll risk it."

"What are you thinking about?" Iruka interrupted his rumination. The bed-ridden young man was fluttering the leaves of one of Naruto's spiky flowering weeds. They sat in a window box open to the sky – equinox blue; it was practically summer.

"Oh," Kakashi muttered, deliberately propping his heels on the edge of the bed because he knew how much Iruka disapproved of that. "Human mortality. The inconvenience of it. Loosing things."

"Hm, deep thoughts for you." The chuunin leaned back against the pillow, relaxing as nearly as he could considering how easily he was still bruising these days; the headboard of the bed drew ridges on his back. "Though I suppose you'd have to deviate occasionally from pornographic daydreams and the generation of your so-called witty dialogue."

"I am a man of many talents," Kakashi agreed. "And I can multitask. Would you like to hear my witty commentary on Schoolteacher Scandal?"

Iruka grimaced with his whole body. "Decidedly no." In the lapse of attention, his hand strayed to scratch delicately at the interior of his left elbow, still a deep indigo coagulation of blood. They'd struggled to find somewhere to attach an IV when they brought him in; all his veins were collapsed with overuse.

"I gave my report to Tsunade," the jounin brought up. "She disapproved of the way I ended things. Sloppiness was the overt reasoning, but I think she may have been disappointed Bakakkou's research was inaccessible." He shook his head, disgusted. "Politics. I'm glad I'm not the Hokage."

"You're not ruthless enough to be Hokage," Iruka told him. His eyes seemed just slightly haunted, and Kakashi recalled that he had also had an audience with their leader. He said, "I told her what happened: that they knew me from the beginning. It took me a few days to realize, but by then it was too late."

Kakashi had heard all this before, or what of it Iruka would tell. It was a dark story.

"No one blames you." He assured. There had simply not been enough information. With a pit in his stomach, Kakashi thought of just how easily the chuunin could have died from that deficiency. His voice simmering on low heat, he rumbled, "They should be more careful with you."

"I'll be sure to mention that when I write up my official mission report," Iruka said, chuckling hoarsely and then coughing hard. He grinning afterward, rubbing his eyes, which were watery and irritated from the way it jarred his body, hacking like that.

Iruka might not mention it, but Kakashi would.

Keeping his tone light, he offered, "I also think we may have trouble getting approval for me to be your escort next time."

"That's because you're terrible at it," Iruka pointed out.

"Unfair." The copy-nin pouted deliberately. "You've survived both times, haven't you?"

"Narrowly," Iruka admitted, but there was only goodwill in his eyes. And it comforted Kakashi to see it. He'd saved Iruka.

Narrowly. Iruka wouldn't have made it back to Konoha with whatever potent toxin Bakakkou had used ravaging his system, and Kakashi had been forced to purge his system with a jutsu he'd been trained to use only in an emergency. It had been terrible to watch, and for a while he'd honestly believed he'd killed Iruka to keep him alive, but the chuunin had survived. As Tsunade had once so blithely said, survival was what Iruka was good at.

Yet even now, a few weeks later, he was still off his feet, fighting to recover. Of course, if he hadn't spent the first week with Ibiki instead of under a healer's care… Carefully, Kakashi set that issue to the edge of the burner for now.

"Konohamaru's coming by this afternoon," Iruka told him then, showing his companion a sheet of paper. "He sent a letter."

"Is that what that is?" Kakashi critically judged the blotched, indecipherable crumple. "I thought that was something you'd coughed on."

The teacher made a face at him. "Adults bear gifts of obligation. Children offer gifts of heart and time."

"Very poetic," Kakashi rolled his eyes.

But Iruka refused to be brought down by such an uncreative retort. "Why, thank you. But then, we already knew I was the better poet."

He said things like that sometimes, teasing Kakashi with what he might know about those eleven days. They had never discussed what had happened with the clone, or how it had "died." For the jounin's part, it still made him slightly nauseous to think about it, even with the breathing original right there beside him.

"You don't have to stay, you know," the teacher suddenly suggested. It was said with complete sincerity, something that Iruka had never seemed very able to hide. It was his eyes, Kakashi decided. Mute or not, Iruka said a hell of a lot more than ever came out of his mouth.

Right now, he was saying 'I won't be hurt if you leave,' and perhaps more faintly, 'You don't have to protect me.' Possibly true, but Kakashi was very all or nothing when it came to his choices, and he'd made his choice about Iruka.

"Naw, I'll stay," he brushed off the offer, leaning back further on the legs of the rickety chair.

Iruka just looked at him, as though for once it was Kakashi who was the puzzle. "Okay," he said finally. "But if you start reading from that filthy book again, I swear we'll both found out if I have enough charka stored up to manage a small paper-eating inferno."

Kakashi drew his hand over his left breast, where the book was hiding in an interior pocket. "You're cruel, Sensei," he murmured. "You'd strike at a man's heart?"

"Or else the nearest unguarded artery," Iruka agreed with his most harmless smile. A cool breeze fluttered through the open window, and he closed his eyes in the comfortable bed beside the nearby friend. "Thank you," he said then, for a lot of things.

Kakashi knew. He might have explained that he was also thankful, but trying to describe such things was too much work. "Yeah, yeah," he said instead. He looked as though he might drip off his seat, his limbs were so lax. "What else would I be doing anyway? Working?"

"Lazy," the teacher challenged fondly.

"Hm, "Kakashi answered, "There are worse things."

Like lonely, or cold. Neither of which he intended to ever be again if he could help it.