Title: Dreaming of Sunshine

Summary: Life as a ninja. It starts with confusion and terror and doesn't get any better from there. OC Self-insert.

AN: Many thanks to Math-Is-Magic, Frolic (Wafflelate) and Pepperdoken for their help with this chapter.

.

.

Chapter 144

.

.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. ~ Henry David Thoreau

.

.

"I'm going to need you to expand on that," Hawk-taicho said, voice perfectly dry and droll and with just a faint touch of exasperation.

I nodded. "'Divert' is probably better terminology," I admitted. "I just wanted to say 'steal the river'."

"Did you previously specialize in acquisition?" Towa asked, though it was quiet enough to probably be a rhetorical question.

"I think they prefer to call it 'retrieval'," Komachi muttered to him.

"Anything big enough to divert the river will be immediately identifiable as enemy action," Hawk pointed out, ignoring them. "Which is the opposite of our mission."

"Not if it's too big to be ninja."

Hadn't that been what Kankurou had said? It'd be suspicious if I thought there was any possible way you could have done it.

He'd been right. There had been no way we could have faked out a bijuu formation. But if we were very careful, I thought we could fake this.

"Land of Earth has a high number of fault lines running through the country," I began carefully. "Including here. Which means earthquakes are common—"

"We can't fake an earthquake," Hawk-taicho said flatly.

I hummed, and dragged the mission allocated demolition charges out of my backpack. "I think we can."

Well, it'd probably take a little more than just demolition charges.

"The river passes between the twin peaks here," I said, gesturing on the map to the blue line going west-east and the peaks in question. "We plant charges on one side and cause a landslide into the river, blocking it off."

"Hidden Rock will be able to move a landslide and reopen the river," Komachi says, almost instantly. "Maybe not quickly, but they'll do it."

I nodded. "That's why we have a simultaneous second operation to the south, using earth jutsu to open up a new path for the river. Water flows downhill, basically. It finds the easiest path and sticks with it. If ours stays easier than the original path..." I let it trail off. "There's a valley here that runs north to south, between these two mountain ranges. If we open the ends and lower the ground height a bit to turn it into a new river…"

Hawk-taicho traced a finger down the valley, over the markings that indicated its general emptiness and inaccessibility to anyone who wasn't a ninja. "If it goes south then it merges into Sumida-kawa heading to Land of Rivers."

"Where it branches into… everything, nearly," I agreed. "It'll flood, but there are flood plains here and here which'll get the brunt of it. And the valley will probably turn into more of a lake, which should help."

"It's crazy," Hawk-taicho said, but thoughtfully.

We'd done crazier. But generally with less time to think about it. Well, attacking the castle in Land of Snow was probably somewhere on the same level of crazy, and Kakashi-sensei probably had thought about it, but mostly I just remembered doing what he told me. I certainly hadn't been planning anything.

"I want to scout the area first," Hawk said abruptly, seeming to come to a decision. "There might be complications we don't know about yet."

"Yes, taicho," we chorused, packed up our gear, and moved out.

.

.

There weren't any further complications. We traveled to the west of Kaikou Port — to the west of Hidden Rock and therefore hopefully further west than the Cloud delegation would be travelling. The cliff faces along the river were as steep as the map had said, though more intimidating in person. There was nothing we discovered during scouting that would prevent us from carrying out our plan.

"All we need to do is cause a slip on the left peak," I said, as we huddled in crevices hopefully out of sight. "Two charges, buried deep at a third and two thirds to collapse the peak… a third charge where the north end of the valley will intersect with the river, — where we want the overflow to happen. We plant the rest of the charges in the valley to create blast-induced liquification in the ground, and taicho and I use earth jutsu on the south end to shape the exit and lower the valley floor a bit and to simulate the earthquake."

"That'll take a lot of earth jutsu," Towa pointed out. "Especially if you're trying to do it quickly."

"I can't wait to hear your solution for this," Hawk-taicho said dryly and probably would have folded his arms if we weren't being still and sneaky.

"Have you ever done Earth Flow?" I asked.

"No," Hawk said. There was a pause. Then he added, "But I know the theory."

I knew he knew the theory because he'd have learnt about it the same place that I did: from Kakashi-sensei's book of jutsu, that he'd been busy putting together before we'd fixed his sharingan issue. It had been mysteriously bequeathed to us — read, turned up in Sasuke's house one day — and had existed largely as a source of frustration for us, because it turned out that learning jutsu from written instructions was massively more complicated than learning jutsu from a physical demonstration. And they were all A- or B-rank jutsu, which generally wasn't where anyone sensible started.

I didn't necessarily think Sasuke had had much more luck since the last time we'd gone over it but 'Earth Flow' wasn't a jutsu in and of itself — it was… a skill. A way to amplify an existing jutsu, by using the natural environment to enhance it to your advantage. Modifying Earth Release; Earth Split into Earth Release; Earth Flow Divide took it from being measured in meters to being measured in kilometers.

Like seals, it relied on the natural energy of the environment — more directly, it relied on dragon veins or natural chakra channels to conduct and carry your jutsu further than it would go on it's own. On the downside, you couldn't change the course of a dragon vein, so unless there was one exactly where you wanted it to be…

And when there wasn't… well, that was what seals were for.

"Hmm," Hawk-taicho said, looking critically over the valley below us. "And if we leave any evidence of it being a jutsu, it'll be hidden underneath the water."

"By the time they — If they — manage to investigate it, there'll be no way to tell," I said. "If there are seismometers nearby, they might detect that the quake is shallow but… that happens. Most earthquakes are less than seventy kilometers from the surface. Shallow quakes tend to cause more damage, anyway, because it takes longer for the energy to disperse, meaning the shaking is prolonged and there's more effect on infrastructure and surface soil."

"Right," Hawk said, unimpressed with my earthquake facts. "Okay. Towa, Komachi, you'll plant the demolition charges and keep lookout along the river. Bat and I will head south and assume position. We'll initiate proceedings just after dawn — we don't want anyone seeing flashes of light from the charges or jutsu."

"What will the signal be?" Komachi asked.

"Things will start shaking," Hawk said dryly. "If you can't feel it, it won't be convincing for the mountain to collapse. In that case, we'll regroup after an hour and reconsider our options."

.

.

I traced out the path of the dragon vein for Hawk — it wasn't huge but it was strong enough to fit our purpose and ran most of the way through the valley; most of where we wanted it to. It was quite deep and I wondered if there was a mineral vein or fault line that caused it, something that gathered the chakra, or transmitted chakra easier than the ground around it, but now wasn't exactly the time to investigate.

Hawk couldn't exactly feel it, not the way I could, but he could memorise what I pointed out and he had the sharingan anyway. That was all about seeing chakra and stuff. He'd be fine.

I spent the rest of the night sketching out seals to do my part of the job. There was the actual earthquake part — which had to be massive — and creating a smooth join to the Sumida-kawa, without causing that river to flow back into this one.

When dawn came, we ate cold trail rations and watched the sun rise, then put the plan into action.

"Okay," Hawk-taicho said. "The signal first. Start the… what are you calling this seal?"

"Jackhammer?" I suggested, because I hadn't actually given it a name. That wasn't an important part of the creative process. "Oh. Oh. EarthFake. Because. It's a fake earthquake."

Hawk-taicho rotated his head so his mask was fully staring at me.

I giggled.

"Whatever. Just do it."

I did, rolling my scroll out on the ground and planting my palm in the middle of the ink seal. I activated it and the ink curled up, sinking deep into the ground. There was a brief pause, a moment of tension, and the ground started to rock. Violently. I'd designed the waves to be purposefully erratic, because evenly distributed waves were bound to be suspicious, but that did make it … unnerving.

We'd chosen a flat portion of ground to start with, so it wasn't like there was anything around to fall on us (unless the whole mountain range went and that wasn't an issue I wanted to start with), and we could stick to the ground with chakra, but still.

"Your turn," I said.

Hawk's first attempt at Earth Flow Divide didn't succeed, leaving only a regular sized split in the ground, a few feet long and deep. His second attempt was more successful — it felt to me like his jutsu caught and spread, like a spark catching in dry grass, or when you were doing a collaboration jutsu and handed it off to someone else to complete, only there was no one there — and he made a startled sound and broke it off almost immediately.

"It's fine," he said brusquely. "I just didn't expect it to... run away like that. I've got it now, you need to do your part."

I gave a jaunty salute, straightening just in time to see the mountain peak by the river shear in half, like it had been sliced with a sword from heaven, the rock face sliding against itself and crumbling out of sight.

I gave a low whistle. "Guess the team got the signal," I said, because, yep, that had been the plan and it still looked intense.

But that also meant a lot of water was going to be headed our way very quickly and I needed to get a move on.

I dropped another scroll onto the still bucking ground, thrusting chakra into it and a rippling wave to the south made the ground flatten and drop away as the instructions coded in the seal took over. Behind me, Hawk pulsed chakra into the dragon vein and a massive gash opened up in the ground, the sides nearly reaching the edge of the valley itself, that cracked through the rock like it was glass.

Well, that'd do it.

I raced through handseals and smoothed the ground underneath us as much as I could with an earth jutsu, so it looked less like someone had stood here and caused the changes, but wasn't too concerned about finer details. Rough was okay — the was supposed to be natural and would end up at the bottom of a river, anyway.

"Okay, cut the jutsu and let's go," Hawk said.

I nodded and scooped my used scrolls up from the ground, cutting all chakra to them. "Done."

"Isn't it supposed to stop?" He asked, warily, as the ground continued to try throw us off.

"Aftershocks," I said glibly. "The energy has to bleed off. It can't just stop."

We made our way up the side of the valley cliffs to a high vantage point where we could see the scale of the changes happening. The water was definitely being diverted from the river, swirling and creeping up over the collapsed bank and onto the lowered ground. It was muddy and agitated, sinking into the ground and stirring up mud in ways that didn't happen in existing streambeds.

It would probably take a while for the ecology of the river to adapt, but like they said — life would find a way.

We'd given it a lot of space to creep into; it'd take quite some time for the water flow to fill it up and we probably shouldn't stick around long enough to see if happen. Hidden Rock would undoubtedly send people out to see what had happened, given that it had impacted on a major shipping route.

Komachi and Towa were already at the meeting point, waiting for us.

"All clear, taicho," Komachi said professionally. "We even checked the newly exposed cliff face for any blast markings from the explosives. There's nothing that should be suspicious."

"Excellent," Hawk said. "The valley change went smoothly. Should be pretty irreversible."

Even if they did manage to reverse it, it'd take a lot of time and effort, which was pretty much the goal.

We gave one last long look at the new landscape, and headed south to exfiltrate the country.

.

.

Back in Konoha we did the sneaky ANBU thing until Tsunade was ready to see us. Given that there'd been no mission scroll at the start it seemed likely we weren't expected to present any at the end.

"Mission complete," Hawk-taicho reported.

Tsunade raised an eyebrow. "Without complications?" she asked.

There was a long silence. "There were complications," Hawk-taicho said, reluctantly. "However, parameters were within the initial mission briefing."

Given that the initial briefing had given us a lot of allowance to act, he wasn't wrong. Beside me, Towa and Komachi were still and intent, obviously waiting for Tsunade's reaction.

"Alright," Tsunade said, professional enough to not sigh. "Let's hear it."

"Red Team entered Land of Earth via Land of Waterfall," Hawk started, laying out the shape of our mission, briefly, covering the boring and undetected trip to our destination. "However, our arrival at Kawaguchi coincided with the arrival of a team from Hidden Cloud. Four ninja, lead by Killer B."

Tsunade pursed her lips. "What was their reception like?"

"Friendly," Hawk-taicho said, after a beat. "Hidden Rock had at least two Jounin meeting them when they arrived, and security in the area was high, but there was no overt hostility."

That didn't make her happy, which was fair because it wasn't exactly good news. "Any other impressions?"

"We didn't get close enough to observe them," Hawk denied. "We withdrew without being identified, but judged it too risky to continue with the mission as intended, if the Cloud-nin were going to be travelling through the ports."

"And now you're going to tell me the wonderfully creative solution you had to that problem," Tsunade said dryly, leaning back in her chair. "Continue."

Hawk-taicho paused. "We... diverted the river," he said honestly. "Careful application of demolition charges allowed us to mimic natural causes to alter the landscape sufficiently to cause the Furukawa to flow south into the Sumida-kawa instead."

Tsunade blinked. "So. Instead of destroying the ports, you… caused an earthquake and moved a river."

"In essence… yes," Hawk agreed.

She smiled, wryly. "It sounds like Red Team is employing their saboteur to the fullest possible effect," she said. "This is not the outcome I expected, however… it is within the parameters I gave you. Congratulations on a successfully completed mission. We will continue to monitor the situation in Land of Earth and see what results from this."

That was pretty calm, even for one of our mission reports. But then Tsunade did know who she had sent on a mission and had given us explicitly vague instructions so… it probably wasn't unexpected either. She'd known something would happen, just not what it would be.

She dismissed us, and we returned to ANBU headquarters to clean up and do whatever gear restocking we needed.

Or that was the intention. We were just clearing the ANBU HQ entranceway — and its assorted secrecy barriers — when I caught a chakra signal that I hadn't expected. On account of being pretty sure that Kakashi-sensei wasn't in the village.

"Bat?" Hawk asked, voice quiet, like he was speaking low in case someone was listening.

"No danger," I said, smiling beneath my mask. "But you should definitely follow me, taicho."

I lead Hawk in through the winding pathways of the mountain. Komachi and Towa followed us, even though they were technically dismissed. I wasn't sure if it was because they were being nosy or being worried, but it wasn't like I could give a reason for them to leave and our destination seemed to be… a canteen?

There was a hushed kind of air, like a lot of sneaky ninja surreptitiously listening in on a conversation while trying not to seem like they were listening in.

And near the center of the room, an ANBU wearing a dog based mask — Kakashi-sensei, without any doubt — was sitting at a table, slouched and reading. Not Icha Icha, which would have been a dead give away, but a bland featureless scroll. Still a sight that was so familiar to us both.

A second ANBU with a feline mask and chakra tightly suppressed with only the barest hint of rough bark notable to my chakra sense — Tenzou — was standing over him, body language all but shouting irritation and exasperation. "Wolf-senpai," he said, clearly, clearly through gritted teeth. "You can't be here right now."

There was clearly a zone of 'do not enter' around them and I hesitated for about half a second before bouncing over anyway, Hawk trailing after me. Komachi and Towa faded into the crowd to watch, or decided we weren't about to get murdered and left.

"Senpai!" I said, because that was what Tenzou (or… whatever his callsign was. Was that his callsign?) had said and was less identifiable than calling him 'sensei'. "You're back!"

Kakashi-sensei stood and tucked his scroll away. Up close, his mask looked… old. The paint was slightly faded, the white gone slightly yellow, and there were chips and wear marks along the edges. ANBU masks were solid; how long did it take for that to happen?

Well, maybe this wasn't his only and original mask, but if it was then the answer was probably something like 'longer than I'd been alive'.

"Just for a bit," he said and reached out and rapped his knuckles against the forehead of my mask. I scrunched my nose up, underneath it, but apparently this was the new annoying sensei affection now that he couldn't ruffle hair. "And no one willing to greet me when I got here."

He started walking towards the door with a purposeful stride, and Hawk and I fell into step with him. The halls were, or seemed to be, empty, especially in the direction we were going.

Tenzou herded after us, as if trying to usher Kakashi-sensei out of HQ. "Because," he said, pointedly, "you aren't supposed to be here."

We made our way towards an exit, though it was an exit upwards to the ANBU training grounds on top of the mountain and not 'away' like Tenzou probably wanted us to go.

"So," Kakashi-sensei asked, lightly in a way that meant he was actually probably serious, "how was your very first ANBU mission?" Though this was honestly a lot of effort to go to for such an innocuous question – something that could have been asked obliquely at basically any time.

And it was pretty likely that with Kakashi doing this, Tenzou knew who we were beneath the masks — since he absolutely knew who Kakashi was — despite that being entirely counter to Tsunade's intentions. So it was entirely too late to worry about giving away details like 'first mission'.

"It was pretty fun," I said, cheerfully. "But my taicho is a stickler for the rules."

Sasuke tripped me, lightning quick, and I staggered to regain my balance, trying not to giggle. It was hard to remember to be professional scary black-ops when it was us.

"I'll send you on a mission with Ocelot-taicho and then see if you complain," Hawk-taicho mock threatened. "She wouldn't let you get away with things like that."

I wasn't sure if he was referring to teasing him or to our whole entire mission, but it didn't really matter.

Kakashi-sensei seemed slightly more bemused by our interactions than normal which – it had been a while, hadn't it? Or maybe I was still slightly riding the high from a successfully completed mission and was being a little sillier than necessary. Whatever, silly was okay, there wasn't anything bad happening right this second that needed me to be serious.

We stepped outside and headed for an empty training field.

"See, Cat?" Kakashi-sensei said. "Hawk is a stickler for rules. He can ensure I don't get into trouble."

Tenzou — Cat, apparently — did not appear impressed by this. "I don't know how you got in," he said, clearly anticipating the answer being something along the lines of 'because he's Kakashi', "but you don't belong here anymore. I will go to Commander Zou. Or the Hokage."

He sounded serious and final, more than the exasperated badgering of before.

Given that the last time I'd seen the 'I'll go to the Hokage' bluff used, it had been called, and since I mostly expected Tsunade's response to be along the lines of 'dammit, Hatake, does classified mean nothing to you?' I wasn't entirely surprised that Kakashi was completely unfazed by that threat.

"Mah, you should relax a little, Cat," Kakashi drawled annoyingly. "It's bad for your stress levels to be so wound up."

"I'm sorry," Tenzou said, voice deadly quiet, almost vicious and definitely not actually apologising, "if I prefer you alive."

Kakashi-sensei faltered. I was sure an actual attack wouldn't have caught him by surprise as much as that had.

It had taken me a little by surprise too, because I wasn't entirely sure where it had come from. It didn't sound like a direct response to the previous statements…

I glanced at Hawk, who definitely didn't know either, and we both faded backwards to give them some space and, if not privacy, then at least the polite fiction of it. Kakashi had probably taken us to the training field for a reason so it wasn't like we could just leave, but we could give them some space to talk.

Kakashi-sensei shifted like he wanted to fold his arms, but didn't, so instead of looking defensive looked weirdly open and vulnerable. "Well. Here I am. Alive."

"Here you are," Tenzou echoed. "Alive." He didn't sound happy. "And still doing your best to change that."

"No?" Kakashi-sensei said, sounding a little unsure. "Hokage-sama has an assignment that keeps me pretty busy."

"I heard," Tenzou said, bitterly. "I guess I should have known you'd find another way, regardless."

Yikes. I was pretty sure I knew what was going down here now. I still didn't want to get involved, but I hadn't wanted to get involved when Tsunade had knocked on Kakashi-sensei's door and tried to drag me into it, either. Hadn't she basically said that he'd been put on Jounin-sensei duty as light work? And been given the War Operations in-village posting when that hadn't been enough?

And now he was back in the field again.

If you didn't know that he was better, that might have seemed like backtracking.

"I'm not— I am actually just here to make sure the kids are okay. That they're not… doing what I was. With ANBU."

Well. I glanced at Hawk again because that was actually about us and explained why Kakashi-sensei had shown up in the first place. I had basically assumed it was generic Kakashi protectiveness and, yeah, okay, that was under the umbrella.

"They aren't," he added, like it needed qualifying. "They seem happy."

"We had moments like that," Tenzou pointed out. He swallowed. "Didn't we?"

"We did," Kakashi-sensei said, slowly, like he was still trying to catch up to the turns the conversation was taking Like he was realising that maybe they had been friends, even when he'd been in his worst place. "Yeah.. Sometimes."

It didn't seem like the correct response.

Tenzou's body language closed down. I hadn't been aware of how open he was getting, until all those walls came crashing back down. "You'll die," he said, despair upon resignation, with the clear understanding this wasn't an argument Kakashi would even care about. "If you keep this up."

Not kept. Not past tense.

Kakashi-sensei, no.

Kakashi gave a full body flinch. "Wait. Tenzou." He seemed to fumble for words. "It's– The thing that you noticed," he said, which was probably half because this was not a secure location and half because he didn't want to actually say it. "It was healed. So you shouldn't… worry."

"What?" Tenzou said.

Kakashi hunched his shoulders. "You didn't think the Hokage would send me out if I wasn't cured, did you?"

There was a long silence where the answer 'yes' might have landed. "Just like that?" Tenzou asked, instead. "No more problem, everything is fine now?"

"You say that like it was easy," Kakashi responded, trying to evade back into banter. He waved a lax hand in my general direction. "Ask them, if you don't believe me."

The feline mask turned in my direction, so I stepped forward. "Operation; Miracle," I said, choosing my words carefully. "Was a medical enterprise spearheaded by Tsunade-sama that returned the shinobi in question to full field readiness."

I nodded. That was all true. Definitely implied things. But was true.

"Were you ever going to mention this?" Tenzou asked, staring at Kakashi-sensei blankly. Some kind of tension unwound, only to be replaced by puzzled hurt. "I would have liked to know."

I sank back again.

"I didn't mention it in the first place," Kakashi-sensei pointed out, stiffly. "You worked it out. You'd have worked it out again."

"Right," Tenzou said, shoulders slumping. "Of course I would have." And there was the resignation.

"Sensei," I said quietly, "that was cruel."

I loved him and I could cope with his weird social issues but there was 'not talking' and then there was 'leaving a friend to wonder when you would die'. I didn't really know Tenzou, not more than that he was Kakashi's friend and that one meeting we'd had in the tower, but it was enough to make me want to step in and fix this.

"Stand down, Bat," Tenzou said, tiredly. "You don't need to fight with Wolf-senpai on my behalf. Once you burn that bridge there's no going back. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised I wasn't told."

"I meant," Kakashi-sensei said, falteringly, because he knew it had been cruel and it was a little too late to actually do anything about it but try to explain whatever thought process he had had. "I thought you were keeping tabs. I thought you knew. Because you knew before."

"How would I have known?" Tenzou asked, throwing his hands up. "Your many and varied hospital visits? The way you tried to pass your students off to me?"

"Ah… in my defence that was before it was fixed," Kakashi offered, like he knew it was a pretty shallow defence and in fact possibly made things worse. He scratched the side of his mask with a fingertip, which was even more pointless with the ANBU mask than normal. "I should have told you. I'm still…" he paused unsure but continued anyway, "not really happy you made me leave, even though everything worked out better. For the best. But I didn't leave you in the dark because of it."

"I knew it wouldn't make you happy with me," Tenzou pointed out, "I did it to keep you alive. It was a trade off I was willing to make. Would be willing to make again." He crossed his arms.

Kakashi nodded. "Well. I'm not back. And also not dying. So there shouldn't be any need for that?"

"Hopefully not," Tenzou said, "because I don't have any more bridges to burn."

Okay, I had been told to keep out of it, but that was just too sad. I reached out — motion clearly telegraphed to not startle him — and patted him on the shoulder.

He was the mokuton guy, clearly he had, in fact, infinite bridges. That was probably not a good thing to say right now, given that I was attempting to be the tonally aware one in this conversation.

Kakashi-sensei cleared his throat. "I don't actually know where you're trying to go with this metaphor," he admitted. "But you said it twice so it probably means something."

"It means you're friends," I said, only a touch impatiently. "And now you need to, like, say that and then hug and make up, or beat each other up on the training field. Whichever."

"We're friends," Kakashi-sensei protested, like I'd insulted him.

"Wolf-senpai," Tenzou said, voice slightly thick. "That's how you treat your friends?"

"There's a reason I don't have many," Kakashi said back, somewhat warily. "You and Gai. So… yes?" He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, towards the open field. "We could spar?" He asked hopefully.

I almost expected there to be more conversation, but Tenzou took him up on it, which meant I could slink off towards Sasuke. I hoped that had resolved it, but I still lacked enough of the background to do more than guess wildly at the issues involved.

"I could be at home right now," Sasuke said, sighing. His arms were crossed and he was leaning back against a tree. "I could be asleep."

I nodded, standing shoulder to shoulder to watch two elite ANBU kick each other around. My heart hurt. 'I did it to keep you alive, even though you'll hate me for it.' Didn't that dig in too close to home?

"We can probably leave," I suggested. "I'd say this is more important than whatever Kakashi-sensei was going to say to us."

Or he'd come and find us later. Either way, we left them to it.