Adult-FanFiction.org : Naruto

Off-kilter	By : SumiHatake Category: Naruto > Yaoi - Male/Male > Kakashi/Iruka Views: 2102 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto, any of it’s characters, the world, or anything specifically created by Kishimoto. I also didn’t make a penny on this; it’s purely a fanmade piece that I wrote for enjoyment.

Chapter List
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Chapter 3
“I think there’s something wrong with Kakashi-sensei.” Sakura stated flatly before handing team seven’s mission report over.
Iruka felt his mouth go dry. He took a deep breath. “Why do you think that Sakura-chan.”
She glanced around as though she was worried about being overheard. “He was on time.”
The comment made him laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. “And what? That’s a bad thing?”
“No, but it’s not like Kakashi-sensei.” The statement started out with concern and ended with obvious irritation. “Naruto thinks space aliens have done something to him and Sasuke thinks it’s one of his tests.”
Those were far less dangerous theories than the one he had. “And, what do you think, Sakura-chan?”
“I...” Sakura looked away, her brow furrowed and she pressed her lips together into a tight thin line before finally look back at Iruka, resolve clear in her eyes. “I don’t think it’s Kakashi-sensei.”
“It’s his chakra signature, Sakura-chan,” he assured, hoping it would ease some of her worry. “I know. I checked.”
Her eyebrows rose for a moment and then she smiled. “You checked?”
“I agree he’s acting a little off. I even thought it might be somebody trying to play a prank on me, but unless there’s somebody walking around with an identical chakra signature as Kakashi-sensei then it is him.” Iruka didn’t want her getting involved. It was far too dangerous and knowing her and her teammates they would get involved. “There is nothing for you to worry about, Sakura-chan. If it wasn’t him, I would know.”
“Then-”
“Sasuke’s a smart kid, maybe he’s right.” Iruka was proud of her, he really was, but he wanted to keep them all safe. They were his kids; he had to protect them, and right now, that meant he had to lie. “It seems more likely than Naruto’s suggestion, right?”
“Yes, but-”
“Do you trust me?” Iruka cut in.
“Yes.”
“Then, trust me when I say you have nothing to worry about.” He smiled and did his best to project the unwavering calm of a teacher. ‘You are not wrong, but you also don’t have anything to worry about because I will fix this. I will protect all of you, including Kakashi.’
Slowly, Sakura returned the smile. “Alright, Iruka-sensei.”
Iruka watched her leave and wondered how he was going to prove to the hokage what his gut was telling him. He needed proof or at least something more substantial. It occurred to him then that if there was anything to be found, anything he could use as evidence, then there’d be a record of it. He knew better than anyone how the file room worked, and he would find out what was going on, and then he’d go to Sandaime. The idea made him feel very much like he was Sakura. He only hoped Sandaime didn’t do what he’d just done and tell him not to worry about it, that everything was fine.
~*~*~
After telling Genma he was going to clean the records room, he’d managed to escape into its depths. Tucked in the farthest corner from the door, he now had more files out than he usually saw in a week.
Pulling all the records the hokage, Ibiki, and Inoichi had touched had taken hours. Figuring out which ones he definitely didn’t need had taken even more time. Putting them back was going to take more time than he wanted to think about.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for, and several stacks of them were sealed as classified. Aside from the seals indicating who’d sealed them and, therefore, who you had to speak with in order to lift the seal, the only thing some of them were marked with was a code name and date assigned so he started by sorting the hundreds of files by that. Name and date. “Sandaime-sama is going to kill me when he finds out I did this. There is probably a lot here that I could learn just by studying the names and dates on these. I probably don’t even have the clearance to touch them.”
Iruka winced at the realization that he was very likely going to end up on the other side of Ibiki’s desk. As much as he liked Ibiki, that was not a wise place to land yourself. Ever. Ibiki was only terrifying when you gave him a reason to be, and Iruka was very likely doing exactly that. “Don’t think about it, don’t look at those stacks unless you have to.”
More than likely they weren’t what he was looking for anyways. Those files were under scrutiny constantly, so if it was one of those he’d probably already have an ANBU breathing down his neck. This... this had to be different. It had to be something that could get missed. Something that seemed ordinary or routine but wasn’t. That meant a mission assigned to somebody more like him than like Kakashi. The only thing that bothered him about that was that somebody like him couldn’t pretend to be somebody like Kakashi.
“Satou, Suzuki, Nakamura, Kimura...” Iruka tossed the files into stacks until he had so many files he really didn’t have space left. He combined several of the really short ones and set them aside as highly unlikely.
“My eyes are starting to cross.” And he was only on step one; he still had to go through the most likely candidates and figure out which one was relevant. Iruka pulled his ponytail out, rubbed his fingers over his scalp, and then swept it back up into a new tail, the loose strands recaptured. “I’m never going to figure this out at this rate.”
He sorted through the ones that he knew were currently out on missions and the ones in the hospital. Surprisingly once he cleared those out, it left him with only four names, one of which only had two files. Airi Hara, Kazue Kobi, and Masaru Kimura were left. “Which of you is up to something?” He asked, staring at the stacks.
Kobi had the thickest one, but he wasn’t through all of the files and after a quick glance Iruka realized none of them were dated more recently than three months ago. He pushed that one aside and picked up Kimura’s instead.
Flipping the top one open, he skimmed the personal information like age, weight, where he was living, and next of kin. There was only one name listed there, and it had been stamped with deceased. “Hm.”
Iruka flipped through several more pages, all hospital reports. Notes about his mental stability, improvement, and something about not wanting to talk about a mission. He grabbed the next folder, an older one, and flipped through it. It was a mission, D-rank, and about as bland as it could get. Something you would assign a genin or somebody you wanted to punish. Ibiki had signed off on it, which meant it could easily be that, but given the medical paperwork Iruka was betting it was more than likely not the case.
Easy missions were often given to shinobi when they were recovering. Kakashi loathed them and often tried to escape getting assigned them by not getting checked into the hospital. Getting checked in meant you had to get checked out which meant that until a doctor said you were fine, you weren’t fine. Kakashi never liked to admit he wasn’t fit for duty. Iruka knew when he was hurting because he took solo C-rank missions that would bring in a decent amount with very little risk.
It didn’t sound entirely hare-brained until you factored in the fact that they were most often away from the village. If you got attacked while you were already injured, you couldn’t properly defend yourself, and Kakashi had enemies who would look for any opportunity made available to them.
Iruka found himself wanting to punch Kakashi just at the thought, which only served to make him angrier because he was worried. “You had better be okay, you idiot.”
Shaking himself mentally, Iruka flipped through several more files. Most of them were D-rank files issued by Ibiki, a few were medical files, a few minor disciplinary reports, and then he found them... the earliest files, the ones that told him it had to be Kimura. The oldest were just around six months ago. If he hadn’t gone back as far as he had, he would have missed them, and he probably would have missed Kimura as a suspect altogether. Kimura had lost his entire team in a mission, his twin brother among them. According to his report they’d been attacked on the border by Rock, and his team had sacrificed themselves so that Kimura could get back with the scrolls they’d recovered from their incursion. Kimura had made it back physically unhurt, but near catatonic. He’d given the details, but they were flat simple facts. He shut down and refused talk about it beyond the very basic details required to give his report. It explained why he’d been assigned to missions inside the village and desk work only and why Kakashi would have been watching him.
He pulled the first file he’d grabbed and looked at the address again. It was tellingly close to where he’d found Kakashi on more than one occasion, and the restaurants they’d frequented before Kakashi’s last mission were all in that same area.
Iruka set the mission file aside and got up. Stepping around the stacks he walked over to the personnel files and pulled Kimura’s out to read over. Kimura was a chunin a couple years older than him, and Iruka was fairly sure he could easily win in a fight against him since most of Kimura’s attacks relied on his twin brother. They were also primarily ninjutsu and taijutsu attacks. He was weak in genjutsu, and while he had good stamina, his chakra levels didn’t lend him much help. It didn’t lend to the idea that Kimura even had the ability to maintain a henge for as long as he would have had to while pretending to be Kakashi and it definitely made him being able to fake a chakra signature out of the question.
“Is it you? If it is then how are you doing it, Kimura?” Closing his eyes, Iruka frowned and rubbed his temples. The tips of his fingers stung from paper cuts and the dust was starting to get to him. “How do I check if it is you? I really hope I’m not back at square one with this.”
Sighing, Iruka ran over what he knew and silently cursed Kakashi for not giving him more than some vague warning before taking off on the-hokage-only-knew-what kind of mission. “You couldn’t have said to stay away from Kimura? It would have been a little more effective than having the dogs babysit me. Damn you, Kakashi! Damn you and the hokage both.” The wave of anger and worry was overwhelming, and Iruka slammed his fist into the wall before he could think to stop himself. It hurt, and Iruka stared at his scraped knuckles, annoyed at himself. Then it clicked, and he damn near kicked himself for not realizing it sooner.
Picking through the files again, Iruka pulled out the disciplinary reports. Three were general attitude problems, one for fighting in a bar, and several others for failure to report in for watch duty. The one that really caught his attention however, was dated a couple weeks before Kakashi left for his mission and it was for being in a part of the hospital above his authorization. Medical Records.
Grabbing the week's mission room roster from beside the door, Iruka looked it over. Then he checked the files of Kimura’s most recent missions, nothing in over week and every single one of Kimura’s shifts had been covered by somebody else since the day before Kakashi was due to return. It wouldn’t be noticed, because they were covered by so many different people. Since he was still on light duty, not picking up missions would simply be passed off as depression, and anyone who thought about it would likely have assumed he was at home sulking.
It was Kimura, and it also wasn’t. Kimura couldn’t pull it off, so he was probably dead and likely had been since his team was wiped out. There was probably somebody assigned to watch him while Kakashi was gone, but if the guy had taken Kakashi down, it wasn’t improbable that he’d done the same to them. Iruka would bet whoever had posed as Kimura and was now posing as Kakashi had either done the same to whoever was assigned to him in Kakashi’s absence or he’d reported in as Kakashi and covered the hand off. There wasn’t a person in the village who wouldn’t take Kakashi at his word. If Kakashi said he’d handled the hand off and had the report to prove it then there would be no questions.
“Time is running out for you though isn’t it?” Iruka smiled, pure malicious anger at whoever was in his village filling him. The only way Iruka could think of to pull it off would require abilities similar to Ibiki’s or Inoichi’s. “You killed Kimura, but I’m betting Kakashi and his second are still alive.” It would also require a high level of knowledge about chakra channels and the ability to seal one’s self into a henge. That meant somebody in Kakashi’s class and probably somebody medical. “I don’t know what you’re planning, and it still doesn’t explain why you’d be targeting me.”
“Mah, Iruka-sensei that one’s easy...”
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