an intro
Kakashi had been the one put in charge of sealing scrolls.
Since Naruto had made Hokage, Kakashi’d been assigned numerous “busy body” missions in order to “keep his masked nose” out of the business of his cute little student. The latest such mission was an archeological dig on Uzuhio. Kakashi (to keep him out of Konoha for as long as possible) was the only ninja on the mission.
He was in charge of gathering food and water for all 27 civilians, and checking all the sealing rooms for traps and explosions, and fetching supplies from out-of-reach places.
On the bright side, it was working.
He hadn’t once worried if Sasuke and Sakura were doing okay with baby Sarada, or if Hinata was back on missions, or if Naruto wasn’t too overwhelmed with paperwork, or if Gai and Lee had actually set up that chili shop, or if Neji had gotten that job at the Academy, or if Obito was getting along with Yamato and Sai.
He hadn’t.
Not once.
He hadn’t even checked through the bond he and Obito had (courtesy of sharing a dimension-traveling set of eyes) to make sure that his dogs were being fed properly and Mr. Ukki was being watered.
It’d been three weeks of the mission (four more months to go), and Kakashi was pleasantly busy.
He kept up a steady patrol, made sure that seals and artifacts were lined up for the scientists, archeologists, and various other -ists to look at until noon, go hunting and prepare lunch, explore the mountains for any living native creatures and bring back live samples, clear the rubble around a building (carefully, he’d been warned), go swimming, try to walk on the whirlpools, patrol, head to bed.
Pleasantly. Busy.
Busy.
Bored.
The patrol was only ten minutes long. The seals and artifacts didn’t need much preparation, and usually they didn’t finish going through everything he set aside anyways. Hunting barely took any time, and cooking maybe two hours for lunch.
He’d walked the entire mountain range twice over, and swum through every coral reef, and had started naming the whirlpools.
The rubble was mostly cleared, because everytime he had a break, he found another house, grabbed a supervisor and a tarp, and carefully reconstructed it and pulled the pottery shards from the earth.
He’d learned how to categorize the pottery types, and now knew even more about sealing, and could read practically every code Uzushio had come up with, and was learning bricklaying so that the houses could be brought back to their former glory.
And he was so bored.
Of course, that’s when someone managed to attack.
It was Kiri, naturally. It was always Kiri.
Kakashi had been waiting for an attack from Kiri since he’d gotten there, and they’d finally come through. A small army came in boats – rafts and canoes and kayaks, more like – and swarmed the sand before Kakashi could blink.
He was on them like a hyperactive puppy.
Lightning twisted to his whims, and sparked among the seafoam, overturning some of the small fleet.
His Sharingan burned and the activation tugged on his chakra. Adrenaline rushed through him and he had to hide a feral grin (forgetting, of course, his mask was on). He hadn’t felt this young in years.
The nature chakra surrounding Uzushio was filled with direction. Thousands upon thousands of seal lines pulsed underneath the island’s mountains and pushed the nature chakra to run through its citizens. Kakashi may not have been a citizen, but he had been living there for a few weeks.
Earth chakra stabilized his bones, healing old breaks better than even Tsunade had done.
Wind chakra felt heavy in his lungs, but the oxygen high was fantastic. He could feel chakra-charged oxygen (which had healing properties when used properly) revitalizing him.
Water chakra rushed through his blood. His heart beat faster and faster, the thuds filled his ears, and the force of the sea itself was behind him.
Fire chakra dogged (hah!) his every step. The sand turned to glass under his feet. The summer sun above him burned his visible skin, and scorched the flesh of his enemies. It was times like this that he could almost believe in Amaterasu and her fierce love for those who bore her gift – the Sharingan.
But the Lightning.
The Lightning.
Though it was day, Kakashi ( man, chakra highs are wild, some distant part of him noted) could feel the tales of his ancestors. The ones Sakumo had told him as a child, and again at a campfire surrounded by howling wind.
Horkew Kamuy. The Great White Wolf Spirit. A protector, a guide. Lightning given physical form. The first Hatake. Ancestor of his people.
Lightning burned through his mind. Lichtenburg figures blinded his right eye, and the electric signals in his brain quicked their pace.
Suddenly, it hit him.
(or maybe that was the water dragon to the head and the resulting concussion)
Uzushio had always been regarded as a holy place. Its seals made its inhabitants' connection with nature even stronger.
It was midday when Amaterasu was strongest.
He was protecting his civilians, as Horkew had always done.
Kakashi had maybe, just maybe, messed with one too many seals over the last few days.
Because the chakra flowing through his veins and into his jutsu, wasn’t his.
In fact, not a single drop of chakra in his body (including the stuff needed to keep him alive) was his.
That was probably bad.
—
Despite the absence of his chakra, he held the Kiri-nin off quite well. He’d marked a few trees with Hiraishin and was jumping rather easily around the battleground, successfully confusing his enemies about where he’d appear next. Sometimes, he’d Kamui his Hiraishin Markers to other spots to really throw the ninjas off.
Holding the Hiraishin constantly tugged at his mind in a way jutsus didn’t, so he eased off the seal jumping and resorted to Shunshinning and Kamui.
The sun was sinking low.
Somehow, somewhen, he’d lost eight hours to the heat of battle.
His civilian charges were well on their way to Konoha, unimpeded, and everything precious that was left in Uzushio was sealed away. The mountains would guard it well.
Why did he know that? Why was he worrying about it?
Oh.
The earth chakra in his veins had fled him.
The wind in his lungs was weak. The fire in his step felt cold. His heart struggled to keep beating.
The sun was setting, his charges gone, and the only thing he had was the power of the living storm.
The sky overhead was cloudy, thick and heavy with rain. Lightning sparked and twisted.
Kakashi didn’t have any chakra of his own.
His enemies were still standing. They’d gotten backup long ago, from Iwa and Kumo and a few more Kiri.
Waves of opponents changed and pushed forward and pulled back.
So, he thought, I’ve made it through two wars, ANBU, Root, and four Hokages. I’ve fought a goddess and bijuu, and battled immortals to the death. I’ve been killed, and spoken to the dead, and fought alongside them.
This is what takes me out? A bunch of hopped-up kids from Kiri, Iwa, and Kumo that want to steal some scrolls from an abandoned island?
With a bit of glee, his Sharingan spun.
I’m taking them with me.
—
Kakashi howled to the setting sun and rising tides.
The distant howls of his summons answered back. His pack, his pups, his beautiful, wonderful ninken. He felt them reach to him across space, from the summon lands.
A Fuma shuriken swished through the place where his head was, and Kamui tugged him into the in-between.
The Hiraishin seal made a discordant twang.
It was meant to be indestructible. A marking written on the fabric of the world that could never be removed. Even now, two decades after the Yellow Flash’s death, his markers remain.
Kakashi’s White Chakra – unchanneled, uncontrolled – shattered all seven markers in an instant.
—
He tried to maybe Kawarimi, maybe Shunshin, maybe reverse summon himself away from the blast.
That was his final mistake.
The light from the explosion was blinding.
—
Kamui: One who hunts the gods’ will. One who represents their will.
Amaterasu: goddess of the sun and sky. She was with him as long as it was day and she was present.
Horkew: the White Wolf god. The Howler. He has never left him.
It was a funny time to remember an old story, one his dad had told to him many nights.
One he’d been told beside a campfire surrounded by howling wind.
Horkew, once a mortal wolf, had hunted with his human master. He made his master’s life easy, bringing deer and bears to the village people to eat. One day, the wild wolves asked Horkew to run with them, go hunting with them for a single day.
He agreed, naturally. Wolves were pack animals through and through.
When the day was done, Horkew returned home, where his master was angry that he had not brought any food for the village people.
He was beaten to death, and his body was tossed in a river to float into the ocean.
But Horkew was a god.
Another master found him, and this one cared for and honored him properly.
But the first master came back, pleading for forgiveness and to have his faithful hunting dog. Of course, Horkew returned. He was loyal. But once again he played with the wild wolves, and once again he was beaten to death.
Once again, he was sent on a course towards the ocean.
He did not stop at the house of any master, but continued across, to the Ancestors. The great wolf boss welcomed him home.
The great wolf boss destroyed the village Horkew had once called home.
Therefore,
Simply put,
a dog,
even if you kill one,
should not be sent in the direction of the ocean.
Its ancestors are wolves.
It should be sent in the direction of the mountains.
That’s the lesson of this story.
—
When the light faded from the sky, when the dust and rubble settled, when the full moon was bright upon the island of Uzushio.
Half the island was gone.
The bodies of the foreign shinobi were turned to ashes.
Kakashi drifted out to the sea.
—
Kamui let Kakashi access another dimension. It was technically Obito’s (and whoever else had had Kamui before), but Kakashi could access it just as naturally. After the battle with Kaguya, he was also familiar with being thrown into other dimensions suddenly. The change in air, the change in chakra.
He’d grown to hate it.
Hirashin was a space-time-altering jutsu that let one instantly teleport to wherever they desired.
No one quite knew how it worked, just that it did, but there were some good theories regarding folding the plane of existence and punching a needle through to connect those two points.
The summoning jutsu was even more elusive.
Every contract was different and only readable to the author, but even then Kakashi was the weird one. His dogs could summon him (as long as his chakra was low enough).
All of this ran through Kakashi’s mind at a lightning pace as he stared in shock at the world in front of him.
He’d managed to toss himself in another dimension.
He vaguely remembered floating (down a river of dreams) and seeing all the seals he’d destroyed. Some of them had to have been curses that could result in this.
Because he’s not his normal height (which was fairly tall) and he’s in possession of a tail, and his ears are twitching, and his eyes are uncovered.
And he’s a wolf.
Silver-gray fur with darker marks around his muzzle (which he can see quite well because it’s very long ) and limbs, and there’s a shock of fur around his scruff reminiscent of Tobirama’s jacket. His legs are knobbly and horse-ish, and his tail is black-tipped, and the growing panic of “I’m a wolf!” is only outstripped by the growing panic of “I’m a puppy!”
He’s probably adorable!
Hatake Kakashi is a killing machine, and is currently in the body of a puppy that’s probably not even six months. Sakura would squeal at his presence. Sasuke might smile. Naruto would pick him up.
He’s a puppy.
Kakashi is a puppy and the trees are unfamiliar.
Because he’s in another dimension.
And maybe another time.
That just makes things more complicated.
If Kakashi can get back to the Elemental Nations, well he has to figure out how to turn back into a human and get into the past (or future, which might be harder). If he can get himself back to human form, he’s still in the wrong dimension and time period.
Anyone who comes searching for him in this dimension could miss him by a decade, or by an Ice Age.
Or by species.
Because he’s a dog.
Stupid Team 7 curse, he grumbled, and it came out as a heavy chuffing. I can’t even blame this on Naruto.
Most of them did, when something like this happened.
Now to figure out where the nearest civilization was (if there was one).