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cyb-by-lang · 6 years

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Shell Game (14/?)

Kei and friends do some field work.

While wearing her ANBU outfit, Kei took the train to Hosu on Tuesday night. Not openly—once again, the Transformation jutsu was earning its keep—but she disappeared into back alleys and dark corners as soon as she could get away from the crowds. Skittering up brick or concrete walls like some kind of malformed frog honestly felt like a return to form. Almost like slipping on an old, well-loved sweater, though the armored uniform wasn’t acquainted with sleeves as such.

Still, standing on a roof, in the middle of a real city with real skyscrapers, kind of made her feel like Batman. Hosu was no art deco nightmare, but Kei hardly needed a gargoyle to dangle from. She had a whole skyline and plenty of air conditioning units.

The air split open on her lonely rooftop, and two similarly-uniformed shapes tumbled out in front of Kei.

It was kind of funny how much “tech” was being sneaked back into Konoha through Obito’s constant prowling. In much the same way as a tourist buying up crap for resale didn’t make waves, Obito’s half of the discretionary budget was mainly materials nobody in Tokyo cared much about. His penchant for disguises and vocal mimicry meant he could go anywhere, be anyone, and buy his own weight in kevlar.

Kei already saw the first results of that exploration when she took a look at Kakashi’s ANBU uniform. His armguards were different from Obito’s or Kei’s, even leaving aside how Kei had taken her personal pair from home. Lighter, somehow. Tight black material flattened his white hair to his head, leaving him nearly anonymous. His light gray vest settled differently against his body, betraying anti-stab armor under the cloth. Interlocking plates, apparently.

And no more open-toed shoes.

Konoha learned fast.

“Crane, Wolf, welcome to Hosu,” Kei said, while her teammates sorted themselves out.

“It stinks of smoke,” Kakashi commented almost immediately, and Kei didn’t blame him. City air was just weird after growing up in Konoha. Even the largest cities in the Land of Fire didn’t have fossil fuel dependency anything like this. His wolf mask and the skintight one underneath didn’t filter that much.

Obito patted his shoulder before quickly being brushed off. “You get used to it.”

Kakashi grunted, then his mask angled toward Kei. His left eye-slit gleamed red. “Any patrol rules, Turtle?”

“Avoid everyone.” Kei adjusted her Isobu-patterned mask for a second, just to fidget, then added, “Treat it like infiltrating Suna. The second an alarm goes up, ditch.”

“Easy enough,” Obito remarked, and Kei gave him a sharp look he ignored. The right eye-hole on his mask was also faintly glowing.

“Take the lead,” Kakashi prompted, and the three of them made their way through Hosu’s backstreets.

Though Kei hadn’t really explored this chunk of Tokyo with any intent last time, she’d been reading newspapers and checking maps in her spare time. She knew where major landmarks were, broadly speaking, and heading back to the apartment after this patrol exercise wouldn’t be difficult. If Hosu was known for anything, at the moment, it was a minor rise in violent crime.

Heroes were dying and that had everyone worried.

Kei wasn’t emotionally invested in the hero scene the way the locals were. Whenever caught up in a dangerous situation, Kei tended to rely on her own power first and only look to fellow shinobi after everything progressed past the point of no return. The idea that she could be saved by a hero, paid by the Japanese government to do good, was still a foreign one. Her experience at the USJ did show her the value of heroes as symbols of hope, at least once Obito and other people filled her in on how everyone reacted to All Might popping into the building. However, her concern about the Hero Killer had more to do with the fact that he was a serial killer than anything to do with who he was targeting.

Still, the principal had asked for a quick check-in, and here Kei was. Poking Hosu with reinforcements and a stick to see if the hornets were awake.

And we cannot even justify killing a multiple-murderer if he becomes too much of a threat to contain.

Kei slid down the outside wall of a nightclub, feeling heavy bass rumble up through her gloved fingertips. Law enforcement doesn’t work the same way here.

Of course it does not. Humans in this world depend so heavily on their technology and their heroes that they have made their world safe. Isobu growled in frustration, tails lashing around in the mindscape.

We’ve had this talk before, Isobu. Besides, from what the survivors have said? He’s not exactly in a jinchūriki’s weight class.

Barely anyone ever is.

Kei let him have the last word. Instead, she held a hand up as soon as she heard a sound around the corner of a roof, feeling her teammates freeze before making any extra noise. Kei crept closer to the edge, channeling chakra carefully toward her ears and concentrating on what she was hearing.

Across from her, Kakashi made several hand signals. Fire. Man. He paused for a second to listen to the same footsteps Kei heard, then added, Big.

Obito signed a question and Kakashi shook his head. Probably asking how big, but the angle wasn’t the best and Kei didn’t like splitting her attention.

“Nothing, again. Heading back now.”

Heroes patrolled, too. Just their bad luck that, when Kei poked her head up just before the man walked of easy view, she recognized Endeavor’s hulking frame. Of all the people who “Big, uses fire, and is a man” fit, the Number Two of all Japan’s heroes was a rather unfortunate find. His Quirk was called Hellfire, and Kei had seen footage of him channeling so much heat through his limbs that he could melt handholds into nominally-solid concrete.

Kei signalled a retreat. Her boys followed her for almost ten blocks before she stopped on a somewhat taller rooftop, crowded with ventilation units, ducts, and antennae.

“Endeavor’s not stationed here normally,” Kei said quietly, retrieving her phone from a pocket. She fiddled with it until she brought up Endeavor’s profile on some official site or other. Probably his. Then she handed her phone to Kakashi. “Stain really must be causing a panic.”

Obito hung back, Sharingan bright behind his mask as he kept alert, and Kakashi settled next to Kei’s left side.

“If a man with his face on fire wants to catch a killer,” Kakashi said after scanning the somewhat-dim screen, “he’s welcome to him. But for him to be here? Those unsuccessful hunts must really be burning him up inside.”

Obito muttered something uncharitable about puns.

Kei shoved Kakashi’s shoulder playfully and snatched her phone back. “We’ll poke around a little longer.”

Truthfully, the patrol didn’t turn up much despite GPS help and rumor-chasing. While Kakashi was primed to detect blood, city scents were overwhelming on a good day. The trio did find an old bloodstain outlined by police tape and blocked by a patrol car, but it appeared the Hero Killer didn’t actually hunt every night. He was an asshole, a murderer, and probably equipped with a dangerous Quirk if he’d managed to overpower so many pro heroes already. But he wasn’t, apparently, all that easy to find.

Besides, cigarette smoke got really bad around crime scenes. Kakashi had signed a No when asked if he could detect anything past that kind of interference. If he’d been a little less disciplined, Kei imagined he might’ve had more to say. Most of it rude.

“One more pass,” Kei said, and they hopped to it.

Between Kei’s phone and Obito’s, as well as Obito’s street-level knowledge of some of the familiar heroes who operated in the area, they managed to make a game out of spotting familiar faces. Fin-helmeted Manual, the Normal Hero, patrolled more during the daytime and seemed to be about in the same weight class as the bank robber from the weekend. Kei managed to find another hero, apparently called Native, whose costume and lack of any notable Quirk just made all three of them scratch their heads.

Well, Obito and Kei did. Kakashi didn’t know or care enough.

Most of the heroes who operated in Hosu, including famous Team Idaten—run by Ingenium and his sidekicks—seemed to be pretty secure in their positions. Maybe that was why Stain kept picking them off, because she couldn’t quite see someone higher on the hero lists getting axed by someone whose modus operandi relied heavily on ambushes. A lot of the higher-ranking heroes were there for power and skill, not just popularity.

“You know, I’m not really seeing anyone who could, like, go toe to toe with us.” Obito commented after they’d passed by a hero patrol. Moving across the city three stories up from ground level had a way of keeping them out of trouble. For now. “Maybe that Endeavor guy. But all of their Quirks are public. Does no one ever do thought exercises about that kind of thing? I mean, you fought Sensei and if you’d been anybody else he’d’ve flattened you inside of four seconds.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Kei replied. The fact that she, better than almost anyone bar Kushina or Jiraiya, knew all of Namikaze Minato’s jutsu and his preferred fighting styles meant she’d been probably in a unique position during their spar. The idea of anybody else getting that close was a disturbing one.

There was kind of a reason it was illegal to teach non-shinobi the majority of their techniques. Shinobi from other villages, too.

Maybe that lopsided information was also why underground heroes were a thing.

After a few more rooftops, Kakashi remarked, “Maybe that’s why the firebug is here.”

Obito cartwheeled instead of landing normally as they crossed another roof. “You think?”

“Probably. But he’s having the same trouble we are.” As all three of them slowed to a stop on top of what appeared to be a four-story apartment building, Kakashi went on, “I’m willing to assume that this person we’re looking for is notorious. Distinctive to the point of having a fanclub, apparently. But I don’t think that we’re the first ones with detection abilities who’ve been called in to try and find him. He might genuinely not be here at the moment.”

Kei glanced across the way, toward the nearest train station. She scratched under the edge of her mask, recalling the discussion she’d had with Hayate about technology. Mass transit was a curse sometimes. “You’re probably right. And if he took a train, he could be anywhere by now.”

“There’s probably a way to track him with local methods, but those aren’t workable from our positions.” Kakashi tilted his head back to check the angle of the moon, or perhaps just out of curiosity. Then, “This patrol is effectively over.”

A disappointing result for Team Minato’s first reunion patrol, but there it was.

“I wish we had other agents to hand this off to,” Obito complained, as they changed into more civilian-friendly clothes inside Kamui. The pocket dimension’s obsession with white, squared-off blocks and bizarre lighting meant finding their clothing stashes was a cinch even without Obito’s help. “It feels like we’re leaving a job half-finished.”

“That’s what heroes are for,” Kei told him. Then her head finally popped out of her sweater collar and she started fussing with the neckline and sleeves. Really, throwing on street clothes over her uniform was a bit lazy, but there wasn’t anyone around to criticise her fashion choices. “And a police department. Though I don’t know how much headway they’re gonna make.”

“Not our jurisdiction.” Kakashi reappeared from behind a distant pillar, sporting a cheap medical mask with ear loops. His black turtleneck and jeans were like Tokyo versions of his jōnin uniform. Perhaps not wanting to match Obito, he’d just styled his unruly hair down over his left eye and omitted the eyepatch. When he noticed the other two staring at him, he said, “I’m not due back for another eighteen hours.”

“Oh, oh!” Obito bounced over to his teammates, grinning. “Kakashi, this place has so much weird stuff. It’s great!”

Kakashi blinked slowly at him. There was a slight edge of dawning dread in what Kei could see of his expression. His chakra flickered slightly. Then he managed to say in an even voice, “Such as?”

Obito and Kei grinned at each other. Kakashi was the newbie here.

Kei said, “Well, I know you like the Icha-Icha series, but there are like a million more options here. And there’s about five thousand types of manga. We need to hit up a bookstore, now.”

“Akihabara?” Obito suggested, his Sharingan shifting to its Mangekyō form. He’d been around Tokyo a few times by now, since he didn’t need to actually attend school.

Kei gave him a Gai-style thumbs-up. “Definitely! It’s not past curfew yet.”

“This place has a curfew,” Kakashi repeated incredulously.

“Just transform into Raidō or something if it ends up being a problem,” Kei suggested as Obito held out a hand, swirling vortex in the middle of his palm. “Anybody older than eighteenish. Twenty, maybe?”

Kakashi waited until Obito had neatly deposited them in an abandoned side-street to answer, “I think I’m fine for now.”

“Good!” Kei ushered them out into the street. “Now, let’s go find the bookstore. There has to be one still open.”

In the end, Kakashi got a new three-part romance series from a writer who obviously published under a pseudonym and a pair of truly terrible joke books. Obito bought a tourist’s guide to Tokyo and a multipack of study aids (sticky notes, highlighters, and so on), just before spotting a novel about Yoshitsune and snatching it up, too.

Kei didn’t buy anything, but she did have both of them stay overnight.

While they were sleeping, Kakashi somehow stole the comforter he’d been sharing with Obito, Obito cuddled up to Kakashi like he was some kind of pillow, and Kei woke up with her head propped up on Kakashi’s side and a crick in her neck. And none of them got up before Kei’s alarm clock.

Some things never changed.

#Shell Game #Keisuke Gekko #Obito Uchiha #Kakashi Hatake #Isobu #my hero academia #crossover

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