The chuunin called the alarm as soon as she realized what she was seeing, then raised the field glasses to her eyes again to watch the ANBU's agonizing approach. Her instincts told her to rush to the aid of her apparently stricken colleague, but she could not abandon her post. She followed his progress with worried impatience, waiting for the support team to answer her summons. "Where are those bastards?" she muttered under her breath. The man stumbled, and she was sure he was going down, when the responding ANBU medics finally appeared, catching the falling ninja before he could hit the ground. A sudden whirlwind filled with leaves materialized, surrounding the figures in the road; when they cleared, the road was empty. "Great. Guess I'll never know what happened. Hope that guy's alright," the woman sighed to herself. But three weeks later she would find out, along with the rest of Konoha's ninja population, when Sandaime broke the news: Shida Akumaru, Konoha Jounin, the Mantis of ANBU, was a Missing-Nin, a traitor to his village, and the murderer of three of Konoha's ablest shinobi, his own ANBU subordinates.

ooo ooo ooo

The previous afternoon, in the mission lounge at ANBU's headquarters, a team of Konoha's skilled assassins were relaxing in each other's company, waiting for their next assignment. Three of them were draped around a small table, drinking green tea; their fourth teammate lazed across a beat-up leather couch, reading. The squad's leader was busily discussing the upcoming mission with the Hokage in the prep room next door.

"Old Scarface's got it bad, huh?" The curly-haired jounin flicked his eyes in the direction of their captain, then across the room to their preternaturally pale comrade, who had his masked nose buried in a dirty comic book.

"Yeah, and poor Kashi doesn't get it at all." The kunoichi rolled her eyes behind small, dark glasses. "That's what happens when they make 'em chuunin so young. He can drop a man at fifty paces with a single jutsu, but he's got no common sense."

"Aw, don't pick on him, Yumi. Would you acknowledge it if Shida were trying to get in your pants?" The third member of their party took a long drag on her cigarette then blew the smoke upwards through her raven bangs.

"Hell no! He's a good ninja and all, and a decent commander, but he's creepy, ne?"

"You're one to talk, bug girl!" The square-faced man made a creepy-crawly motion with his hand, and the trio of elite ninja burst into laughter.

The newest member of their squad put down his book and looked with one sleepy eye at his teammates. "Mah, who's Yumi-chan picking on?" he drawled.

"No-one, no-one. Go back to your book, Kaka-kun. We'll tell you when you need to pay attention." The dark-eyed woman waved her cigarette dismissively in his direction.

"Just so long as you're looking out for me, Akiko-san. I won't worry about a thing." Kakashi's visible eye crinkled up with his familiar, teasing smile.

"You ought to be careful, Kiko-chan, I think our little copy-nin likes you," their male comrade teased.

"Yeah, right, Seiji, I don't think so. He was best friends with my little brother. I only just got him to stop calling me Nee-chan when he joined our squad."

"You ought to be careful yourself, Seiji-kun," Yumi said with a wink. "Kashi's not so 'little' ne?"

Seiji's cheeks colored.

"Yeah," put in Akiko, "I've seen your eyes following him around in the locker room, pervy-boy."

"You were spying in the men's locker room and you're calling me pervy, Uchiha?"

The door to the planning room slid open and a badly scarred face appeared. "Hatake, I need to see you," Shida's raspy tenor voice cut across the room. The lounging trio gave each other knowing looks as Kakashi uncoiled himself from the couch and made his way towards their commander. Hands in his pockets in his deceptively casual slouch, he looked as indifferent as ever, while Shida's eyes held a lecherous gleam.

"Can he really be so dense?" Yumi asked, once the men had disappeared behind the office door.

ooo ooo ooo

That night, in a simply appointed guest room of a rustic but traditional ryokan, Kakashi was carefully cleaning up the last traces of their targets' existences. He fingered one of the stolen scrolls that Yumi's insects had so helpfully recovered from the now-dead shinobi before the ANBU squad had begun their attack in earnest. 'I've got to remember to tell Yumi-chan how effective that technique was,' he told himself. 'First time I've really worked closely with an Aburame. No wonder they tend to keep to themselves - those bugs probably creep people out.' The chakra-consuming Kekkai Konchuu insects were both the parasites and the familiars of the Aburame clan, feeding from their bodies' chakra and in turn serving as the shinobi family's secret weapons. Yumi had sent a scouting party of her insect companions into the fugitive ninja's hideout for reconnaissance, but when the opportunity presented itself, she'd tripled their number and instructed them to relieve the criminals of the contraband scrolls.

There had been three of them, versus the five ANBU. They hadn't stood a chance. The mission had gone like clockwork, and now just the cleaning up remained to do. 'Typical,' thought Kakashi, 'I'm low-man, since I'm newest to this squad, so I get to clean up the blood.' The barest of hint of annoyance flickered across his placid, masked countenance. Forming a sequence of well-rehearsed hand seals, he made the job easier on himself by creating a couple of shadow clones to tackle the rest of the room. "Damn, Shida sure was messy tonight!" Kakashi muttered under his breath. Their ANBU captain had seemed particularly vicious in his assault on the rogue shinobi, wielding his wakizashi with an almost manic malice. 'I guess these guys deserved it, though,' he continued to himself as he used a fire jutsu to burn away a bloodstain on the tatami floor, 'they betrayed the village, after all.'

With a final look around to convince himself that no-one would ever suspect a bloody assassination had taken place in the isolated little inn, Kakashi dropped the Kage Bunshin no Jutsu, his clones vanishing as if they had never been. He was about to step outside and rejoin his teammates when he heard a muffled cry.

"Shida! What the fuck?" Akiko's voice was raised in alarm.

"Would you acknowledge it if Shida were trying to get in your pants?" the scar-faced ninja mocked. The large-framed Jounin pushed his insect faced ANBU mask to the top of his cloth-covered head. The left side of his face looked as if the skin had melted and run together, the shiny scar tissue pulling his mouth into a permanent leer.

"Shida-san..."

"Bug girl here wouldn't. She finds me creepy." He gestured with a bloody wakizashi at Aburame Yumi's lifeless body lying sprawled across the sandy road, insects streaming away from it.

"Akumaru-san, please..." the Uchiha woman's ebony eyes darted between the wild-eyed face of her commander and the bloodied body of her comrade.

"What, you thought I couldn't hear you?" His voice dripped with sarcastic venom.

Akiko backed away, silently slipping a kunai into her palm and forming hand seals behind her back. "You know we were only joking..."

"Too slow, Uchiha!" Shida's voice was close to her ear, a sudden sharp pain at her wrist. "Too bad you didn't inherit the Sharingan. Can't form that jutsu without both hands, can you?" He tossed something over Akiko's shoulder into the road, raising a puff of sand and dust at her feet.

Akiko gagged and lurched forward, staring at her own gloved hand lying palm up, bleeding from its severed wrist. Shuriken whizzed through the misty air in her peripheral vision, and she heard running feet. Shida grunted and stiffened as a single shuriken sank into his left shoulder just above the ANBU tattoo. Before she could react to Shida's momentary distraction, his short sword flashed before Akiko's pain-dazed eyes. He slit her throat. She fell to her knees, then rolled to her side and lay still.

Kakashi hastily formed the katas to invoke the Himitsu Kage no Jutsu, melting into the shadows of the inn's courtyard as if he had no substance. Edging silently towards the sounds of the disturbance, he flowed within the the building's shadows, the rough clapboards pressing into his back. He heard Shinji's shocked voice shout Akiko's name, then the ringing clash of steel. Heart pounding in his throat, Kakashi raced around the corner in time to see a headless body fly by him, neck arteries pulsing an arcing trail of crimson as it fell. He stopped dead in his tracks, holding his breath. Away from the shadows of the building, in faint moonlight, he could see the crumpled forms of two more bodies, one of them still gurgling and gasping through a slit throat. Standing over them was a large, muscular ninja wearing the sleek, blue and white uniform of the ANBU, the mask of a praying mantis pulled down once more, obscuring his disfigured face. Breathing hard, he held a dripping wakizashi away from his body, arched forwards in a tense stance. Shinji's stunned face stared from the grass where it had fallen, parted from his body by his trusted leader's razor-edged steel.

Shida straightened and looked towards the inn. "Hatake!" he called. "Kakashi-kun? Are you done in there? It's time we got going." His voice sounded casual, unaffected by the carnage he had wrought. The young jounin watched with horror as the crazed man wiped his blade on the grass, then stretched as if satisfied from a workout. "Come on, Kakashi-kun. We can't take all night here."

Kakashi felt paralyzed, unsure what to do. He stared at the dark dots swarming away from Yumi's corpse, at Shinji's bloodless, disembodied face. A choking sound from Akiko forced his mind into focus. 'I've got to get Shida away from them,' he realized. Thinking tactically, he molded a powerful burst of chakra and released it into a single, life-like shadow clone. He hated to deplete his chakra so extensively for a single jutsu, but the clone had to be strong enough to fool Shida's expert senses. The clone dropped the Himitsu Kage, becoming visible, and stepped into the path. "I'm here, Shida-san," the cloned Kakashi said, acting as if the bodies in the road did not exist. "Come on." He jumped into the woods, leading Shida away from the gruesome scene.

As soon as he was sure Shida was far enough away, Kakashi dashed into the road. He knelt, taking Akiko into his strong but shaking arms. Blood gushed from her neck onto his trunk armor, dyeing the white material a vivid red. "Ka..." she gasped.

"Shh, Kiko-nee, it's alright." One handed, he pushed his ANBU mask away from his face, exposing his Sharingan eye. His chakra swirled in its carmine depths, spinning the little magatama marks in a hypnotizing spiral. He held the dying kunoichi to his chest and stared into her eyes, willing her passing to be swift and painless, offering her a hypnotic vision of comfort and warmth. He felt her chakra fading, her choking gasps growing faint. "It's OK, Nee-chan. Go be with Obito." Kakashi's voice was ragged, his dark eye filled with tears. Long after he felt the woman who had been a sister to him leave her body, he continued to hold her, kneeling frozen and silently weeping, surrounded by the corpses of his team.

The moonlight dimmed, suddenly hidden behind a scudding cloud, pulling Kakashi from his grief-stricken daze. He shivered a little in the cold October night, then eased Akiko's body to the ground. He gently lifted Yumi's body and placed it alongside Akiko's, then laid Shinji's headless corpse next to them both. He gingerly placed his friend's severed head back in position above his shoulders, closing the shocked eyes with a thumb and forefinger. Bending over the macabre pile, he pulled from each body their Konoha dogtags, then gathered their bloodied ANBU masks. He hung the masks from his belt, the trio of animal faces staring malevolently from his waist. Then pulling his own mask back into place, Kakashi set the corpses ablaze with a roaring fire jutsu, obliterating all traces of his friends.

Kakashi sped northward along the Serpent road, taking the most direct route back, racing to get to Konoha before Shida. He knew his Kage Bunshin had led the commander further south, but it would have dissipated by now, exposing his deception. He doubted the jounin would be tolerant in his current state of mind. He was shocked, however, when he found Shida strolling along the same road in plain sight. If the madman meant to kill him, he certainly wasn't attempting an ambush.

"Shida Akumaru!" Kakashi's voice seethed with fury.

"Ah, Kakashi-kun, there you are." As before, Shida sounded normal. The familiar way he addressed his subordinate sounded friendly, even intimate.

"What. Have. You. Done?" Kakashi gritted the words out. In his mind he heard again the horrifying sounds he had witnessed from the shadows. The sounds of this man, a man they had all trusted with their lives as their leader, mercilessly torturing and slaughtering his comrades, himself unable to reach them in time to protect them. Kakashi was dangerously close to losing control.

"Nothing, Kakashi-kun," the Mantis-faced ANBU replied, his voice still mild. "Just got rid of a few pests."

That was all it took. Kakashi saw red, his mind consumed by grief and outrage. He rushed at the jounin, katana held high for a lethal blow. But his overwhelming passion betrayed him: his attack was unguarded. Shida's wakizashi lashed towards Kakashi, striking him low across the right hip and thigh. His own longer sword bit into his opponent's side, but Shida's specialized articulated armor deflected the blow.

He knew his mistake at once, cursed himself for having given free rein to his emotions. Kakashi's wounded leg gave way beneath him. Gasping in pain, he landed awkwardly, dropping his katana and clutching instinctively at the injured hip. Blood pooled around him on the dry, stone-paved road. He waited numbly for Shida's blade to end his wretched life, but instead of the cut of steel through his bones, he felt Shida's warm arms wrap him in an embrace.

"Kakashi-kun! Your hurt! How did this happen?" Shida's voice was high-pitched with shock.

Kakashi turned his still-ANBU-masked face to stare wide-eyed at the man holding him. He could see his own blood staining Shida's weapon, yet the man seemed unaware that he himself had wielded the thing. Shida had pushed his own mask up again, revealing his ravaged face.

"Hold on, kiddo, I'll help you." The endearment coming from Shida's lips turned Kakashi's stomach.

'He's truly mad,' he thought. 'Mad or possessed. Either way, I have to get away from him.'

He let Shida bandage his bleeding hip, tolerating the madman's repulsive touch for the sake of keeping his own body and soul together. Grinding his teeth in pain, Kakashi considered his options. He had to find some way to lead Shida away again, but he didn't think he had enough chakra left for another Kage Bunshin, and that wouldn't work anyway, since Shida already had the real Kakashi before him.

"Doing OK, Kakashi-kun?" Shida's voice was solicitous, gentle even. "I'm almost done. Whoever your opponent was, he's skilled with a blade. This is deep. You'll have to go to the hospital as soon as we get back to Konoha."

Kakashi grunted an assent to keep the man off guard. Unbidden, Akiko's dying face flashed before Kakashi's eyes. The Sharingan! That was how he could save himself! He pushed the dog-faced ANBU mask up, revealing his sweaty, cloth-covered face and mismatched, heavy-lidded eyes. Looking wordlessly into Shida's blue-grey pupils, Kakashi willed his Sharingan to life. He offered Shida Akumaru the thing he could see that the crazed jounin wanted most in the world. Himself. In the genjutsu he wove for Shida, he willingly went with the man, taking his arm and leaning against it. His eye glittered with red chakra fire, drawing Shida deeper and deeper into the dream. When Shida was hopelessly ensnared, Kakashi sent the dream of himself racing away from the man into the cover of the deciduous forest along the road. Shida leapt to his feet, away from the real man at his side, to chase the illusion.

Kakashi was spent. His chakra was dangerously low, his body anemic from Shida's blood-letting, his mind and spirit worn to a frazzle from the trauma he had suffered. With quaking hands, he sheathed his katana, then used the weapon to pull himself upright. Sheer will and nothing more kept him going, gave him the strength to drag himself along the road, in the direction of home. The sun rose, revealing his presence, but Kakashi had no will left to hide himself. His mind was a numb cycle of pull, ache, shudder, drag, over and over as he lurched towards Konoha. He stumbled, and the pain that shot through his hip short-circuited his brain. Black sparks flared before his eyes, and he felt himself falling, but he just didn't care anymore.

The ANBU medics who caught his limp body were shocked by what they saw. The dog-faced mask and silver hair of the genius Hatake Kakashi were instantly recognizable to them, as were the three faces of the animal masks at his waist: Aburame Yumi's, Surugaku Seiji's, and Uchiha Akiko's. Their blood-smeared presence on Kakashi's belt, and the three extra sets of dogtags he wore around his neck told a poignant and wordless tale. Three of ANBU's elite number were dead, one badly injured, and one, Shida Akumaru, was missing.

ooo ooo ooo

Two weeks later, Kakashi was healing in body, but not in mind. He lay in a hospital bed, staring out the window with a vacant gaze. His Sharingan eye was covered with a silk scarf, his nose and mouth by his customary black mask. The hospital yukata hung loosely from his lean frame; he had lost weight, his collarbones jutting out in sharp relief against his pale flesh. When he was awake, he stared out the window and said not a word. No one could break his withdrawn silence. When he slept, he cried out the names of his fallen comrades. His hoarse voice would ring through the hushed hospital halls, drawing medics to his bedside to sedate the agitated jounin. Two of them anxiously discussed their unresponsive patient outside his room with the Hokage.

"Hokage-sama, perhaps it is because of the Uchiha eye. Hatake-sama is not of that bloodline."

"I do not think that is the problem," the old man slowly replied. "His use of it undoubtedly led to the depleted state of his chakra when you recovered him, but Kakashi has succumbed to exhaustion from overuse of the Sharingan jutsu before, and when he had less control of it than he does now, without such ill effects."

"If he doesn't eat something soon, we'll have to tube-feed him, Hokage-sama." The second medic glanced nervously at Kakashi. She'd had experience before with traumatized ninja who refused to eat, and she did not relish the idea of trying to force this powerful jounin to do anything he did not want to do, no matter how debilitated he was.

"I will explain that to him," Sandaime replied. "I suspect he will comply with my wishes if I tell him to eat." Turning away from the healers with a swirl of his long white robes, the Hokage entered Kakashi's room.

"Kakashi."

The jounin's eye flicked over at the sound of the ninja general's voice, then away again.

"You do not have to look at me. Yet. But you must listen." Sandaime's voice was soft but stern.

"This has gone on long enough. It cannot continue." He paused a moment, walking closer to the bed where the unmoving jounin lay.

"You of all people know that to give up would be to betray the lives your comrades lost. To betray Kazuma's dream. Obito's dream. Rin's dream."

Kakashi continued to gaze out the window, but the tense set of his jaw under the mask told the Hokage his words were getting in.

"You are the one who said to me, Kakashi, that to bring meaning to their deaths you would live their shares of life yourself. You must do this for Yumi, Seiji and Akiko as well."

A tear trickled down Kakashi's silent face from his dark, staring eye.

"Look at me," the grey-haired old man commanded.

Kakashi turned his face to the Hokage.

"You must tell me what happened. Who did this?" Sandaime reached out and lifted the silk scarf from Kakashi's face, stared deeply into his frightening, mismatched eyes.

A single word croaked from Kakashi's parched throat, "Mantis."

"Show me." He held Kakashi's face between his wrinkled hands, focused on the whirling red Sharingan eye.

When the Hokage had seen all Kakashi could show him of the treachery of Shida Akumaru, he released the jounin's face, stroking his hair back from his forehead as if he were a fevered child.

"Thank you, Hatake Kakashi. You have done well. You are a true shinobi of Konoha." He patted the jounin's pale hand, which clutched the blankets over him in a painfully tight fist. "You must eat something if you are to recover, Kakashi."

"Hai, Hokage-sama. I will eat."

ooo ooo ooo

On a sunny October afternoon ten years later, in the aftermath of the second time Kakashi had crossed blades with his former captain, Shida Akumaru's dying body fell across Kakashi's legs, a hole blasted through his chest where Kakashi's chidori had rammed through his ribcage. "You know... this is what... I wanted... all along..." the dying man choked and spluttered, then continued in a gasping wheeze, "To... die... with... you... Kashi... chan." He choked again, then laughed, a grotesque sound. Then his body spasmed, and Shida Akumaru passed into Hell.

"I'm not going with you, bastard!" Kakashi whispered through gritted teeth. 'I never did, and I never will,' he thought, then faded into unconsciousness.

END Chapter 5

Japanese words:

hai - yes/agreement

magatama - sacred, comma-shaped jewels

wakizashi - Japanese short sword, blade shorter than 24 inches

More Names and Honorifics:

Nee-chan - big sister

-nee - big sister

If there are other terms or ideas that seem confusing in this chapter, check the Appendix for an explanation.

Thank-yous:

This took a little longer to write, I hope it was worth the wait. Thanks to all who reviewed, your comments keep me encouraged to keep working at this.

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