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Son Gokū stands, hunched over because he’s too tall to stand upright, and ‘knocks’ on the stone slab behind him with one of his enormous hands.
Said stone is shoved away by someone on the other side, and it kind of bothers Kakashi that it wasn’t opened by the hulking mass of muscle but a thin, white-haired man.
Well - not white, exactly, more cream-colored, and honestly it’s not like the man is skinny. Thin, yes, but toned, not frail or gangly. But it still bothers him. Son Gokū is right there.
The man is also the first of his siblings to not have spiky hair. His is slicked back with a few strands coming loose. His eyes, surprisingly enough, are normal; a smooth, riverstone blue-green, although he has what Kakashi hopes is red paint smeared along his lower eyelids.
Other than that, he appears comparatively mundane. He is wearing a woman’s shirt, though.
The man smirks. Shukaku preemptively flips him off, just before the man says, “Got delayed, did you?”, in the most unbearably smug voice Kakashi has ever heard, ever.
Shukaku flips him off again, with both hands this time. The man laughs - his teeth are little curved hooks and Kakashi doesn’t even want to know how they all fit in his mouth without tearing something.
Fucking done, he thinks, resigned. He might be done, but the failed jinchuuriki aren’t, and Kakashi finds himself herded into the now-open space that was behind the rock.
It looks like it’s just another tunnel and honestly, Kakashi is so goddamn sick of being underground, can’t they get out of these caves already?
“I’m Kokuō,” The man tosses back to Kakashi unexpectedly. The heads of the other three pseudo-jinchuuriki swivel simultaneously to stare at Kokuō, which besides being creepy, begs the question of why they think it's strange for their brother to introduce himself.
Kokuō just looks back over his shoulder as they walk, waiting. “... Kakashi,” Kakashi returns eventually.
Kokuō laughs. “I know,” He says, equal amounts of amusement and annoyance dancing in his eyes. “With the Uchiha massacred, you’re one of the only people with a sharingan Kurama can complain about.”
Something ugly vanishes from Kokuō’s expression as quickly as it comes. “Not that anyone down here is especially fond of the sharingan.”
Someone clears their throat from further down in the tunnel and Kakashi twitches, having not noticed the approach. Their party pauses.
It’s someone new - the man comes closer until he’s mostly visible in Matatabi’s torch light.
“Kokuō,” The man says lightly, “Kurama and Gyūki are arguing.”
Kokuō makes a rude noise. “Stop them yourself for once.”
The man gives him a look—not even a threatening one, just watches him with raised eyebrows and gently downturned lips. After a tense moment, Kokuō scoffs and makes his way down the tunnel ahead of them at a faster clip than before.
The man gives Kakashi a friendly smile full of regular teeth. “Sorry about him,” He says cheerily. “I’m Saiken. It looks like you’ve met Shukaku, Matatabi, Son Gokū, and Kokuō already.”
Kakashi doesn’t respond, mostly because he’s searching Saiken for anything incredibly horrifying.
The man just blinks his protruding bug eyes. They’re strangely reminiscent of Yamanaka eyes, blue and pupil-less. “This is probably a lot to adjust to,” Saiken continues with a laugh, and Kakashi clamps down on the urge to say ‘no, this is a weekly occurrence.’
Saiken shakes his head, blended blue-purple hair brushing grey-skinned cheeks. He looks, Kakashi thinks as lightly as he can, a little bit like a corpse.
Not disturbing at all, he tells himself. Not compared to Shukaku’s… everything.
There doesn’t seem to be anything pervasively wrong about Saiken, but Kakashi has already made that mistake with Kokuō.
“Well,” Saiken says after a moment of uncomfortable silence. “Kurama and Gyūki have likely been broken up by now. We should probably get the others and head up.”
Kakashi snaps to attention. Not literally, he’s too tense for that, but his mind kicks into action. Up means no more tunnels, he thinks, only slightly desperately.
Saiken sticks out a hand in Kakashi’s direction. “Nice to formally meet you, Kakashi-san.”
Kakashi shakes it once and has to refrain from shuddering. Both at the damp, clammy texture of Saiken’s skin, and the fact that he’s just realized Saiken doesn’t appear to have fingernails.
Shukaku shoves past Kakashi and then Saiken and disappears from the torch light with a low, echoing laugh. Matatabi and Son Gokū do not and stay behind Kakashi, likely to keep him from running away.
Saiken rolls his protruding eyes and leads the way down the tunnel.
Kakashi pretends to believe he’s going to make it out of this alive and begins composing a report for the Hokage. It’s a good distraction from the fact that the tunnel’s width is shrinking.
By the time they reach a cavern that’s connected to a multitude of tunnels like the one they arrive from, the tunnel is hardly big enough to walk side by side. Son Gokū comes out last, half-crouched and hunched in on himself.
There's the beginnings of sympathy building before Kakashi remembers that he's essentially being held hostage. No sympathy for you, he thinks mock-sternly, and pauses to wonder slightly hysterically if maybe he’s going crazy.
Voices echo along the cavern from the dark. They’re not especially loud but they are exceptionally charged. Someone - multiple someone’s, maybe - is not the least bit pleased.
Saiken cringes when there’s a brief rise in volume. “... guess they’re still at it, then. Kokuō must not have been able to calm them down.”
Son Gokū snorts. “Kokuō likely didn’t try,” He mutters, voice still as deep and terrifying as the first time Kakashi heard it. He swears Son Gokū’s voice reverberates in his bones.
There’s an actual roar of rage from further into the cavern, so much deeper than a human could manage. Kakashi shivers.
“Kurama isn’t happy,” Comes Kokuō’s smooth cadence, the man appearing a few meters away.
“Well, when is he ever,” Saiken sighs. “Is Chōmei still-?”
Kokuō sniffs. “‘Supervising’? No. She yelled at both of them for ignoring her and ran off.”
Matatabi makes a half-incredulous noise. “And she’s still not back? She knows we’re heading out soon.”
“She’ll be fine,” Kokuō dismisses. “She’s a big girl and she can take care of herself.”
Matatabi narrows her mismatched eyes at him. Saiken wrings his hands. “It’s not like we’ll leave without her,” He points out, not sounding convinced. “And… not much down here would be able to hurt her…”
“Exactly,” Kokuō says, with none of Saiken’s reluctance. He moves past them to camp out next to the tunnel, where Son Gokū had migrated to at some point with none of them noticing.
Matatabi frowns. “Kokuō,” She says, “Where’s Shukaku?”
“What do you mean?”
“Shukaku,” Matatabi repeats slowly, unimpressed with Kokuō’s lack of concern. “If Chōmei has run off and Kurama and Gyūki are having another pissing contest, who’s watching Shukaku?”
Kokuō straightens, suddenly serious. There’s a new tension now that seems seconds from making the air itself boil. “I thought he stayed with you.”
“He ran ahead after you,” Matatabi denies, and Kakashi feels her chakra—white hot and tumultuous—spike angrily before she reins it back in.
“I never saw him arrive, but I wasn’t watching the tunnels,” Kokuō says, and his words are clipped and sharp now instead of smooth.
Matatabi hisses in frustration. The voices swell in volume again and she glares that direction. “Would somebody just cut out their tongues already?” She snarls.
Kakashi wrestles the urge to back away. Matatabi had been the calm, quiet one on the way here, and the temperament switch is… alarming.
She must care about Shukaku a lot.
“Don’t worry, he’s here,” A soft, high voice says off to Kakashi’s left. He spins toward it and- he is really getting sick of being snuck up on by these people.
Matatabi waves her torch in that direction and sighs in quiet relief. “Isobu. Thank you.”
Shukaku blinks from behind the shorter man in front of him, looking confused. “For what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Matatabi deflects. Kakashi frowns; she can’t think Shukaku will let such an obvious brush-off go? “Ah, Isobu, have you seen Chōmei-“
“WILL YOU JUST FUCKING LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE?”
Kakashi startles horribly. The voice nearly breaks under the strain in the middle of the scream. A shudder tries to crawl up his spine at the sound.
Kokuō mutters something impolite and vanishes back into the dark of the cavern.
Kakashi casts around for a distraction from his racing pulse and locks onto the newest arrival. Isobu, he’d been called?
Isobu looks eerily pale in the torch light, with a face to match his voice. Soft and smooth-skinned and childish. He catches Kakashi’s stare with one pupil-less yellow eye (and a darkened sclera Kakashi hopes is just a trick of the light) and waves, unbothered. His fingers are thin and webbed to the second knuckle with a pale, fleshy membrane.
Of course, Kakashi thinks, and takes a moment to be grateful he isn’t shaking hands with this one.
Some red hair has slipped out from behind Isobu’s ear, just barely managing to reach his cheekbone and cover his other eye. It does not manage to cover a soft incline of cartilage jut-out that looks like it’s supposed to be a human nose, if human noses had slit nostrils and looked like they belonged on a turtle.
Kakashi abandons Isobu as a distraction once he realizes he can see part of the seal inked onto the side of the man’s neck, the rest disappearing into his dark, ill-fitting shirt.
That’s just as well, because a guttural, infuriated sound echoes back to them, followed closely by glowing amethyst dots moving rapidly their direction.
Kakashi watches, expression stiff and limbs unresponsive, as yet another red-haired man stalks out of the darkness and past all six of them without a word. His face betrays not one emotion, blank and indifferent and sheer as a cliff face.
No one says a word to him as he disappears right back into the shadow of the tunnel behind them.
Kakashi sucks in a breath as quietly as he can, lungs suddenly desperate for air, and- he doesn’t understand what felt so familiar and awful about the man. His very presence near Kakashi activated a fight-or-flight response Kakashi has been trained out of his entire career.
“Who was that?” He asks involuntarily, and regrets it instantly when everyone turns to look at him. Well, everyone except Shukaku. He’s fascinated with something trapped in his hands that Kakashi can’t make out.
“That was Kurama,” Kokuō says, joining them once more. He sounds miffed. He gestures vaguely back towards the cavern. “Gyūki should be coming now.”
After how all Kurama’s siblings talk about him, Kakashi half-expects Gyūki to be mauled or at least somewhat maimed.
He is not. In fact, he looks more put together than any of the others. He’s wearing clothes that fit, his hair is neatly tied up - dark pink dreads pulled into a high bun - and he has a what would probably be a calm air if there weren’t a large frown occupying his face.
Gyūki looks up at all of them and his frown eases into a more neutral expression. Lines on earthen skin, darker than Matatabi’s, smooth out but stay present, and Kakashi finds himself thinking that Gyūki probably frowns a great deal.
The man surveys them all with pupil-less, beige-y pink-purple eyes. Kakashi almost wants to stop and try to calculate the chances of some of them being Yamanaka-descended, with how many of them don’t seem to need pupils.
“We should begin making our way to the surface,” Gyūki says, quiet but clear. Matatabi coughs pointedly and looks around. Gyūki looks around as well, and doesn’t seem to find anything the matter, because all he does is raise his eyebrows.
Matatabi narrows her eyes again.
“Hatake, no?” Gyūki says instead of acknowledging her, more rhetorical than actual question. He eyes Kakashi, who eyes him back. “How do you find yourself down here with us?”
Kakashi is not so far gone as to betray a mission still technically in progress. Unfortunately, that means the only thing to come to mind - and out of his mouth - is, “Your brother dragged me here against my will.”
Fuck. Ah, well, he thinks. I’m dead. Goodbye world, I will not miss you. You were exceptionally cruel to me in my last hours.
Gyūki’s eyebrows go even higher. He does a wordless sweep of his present siblings.
“Shukaku found him,” Matatabi tells him before he can ask, and if looks could kill, Gyūki would be chock full of icy daggers.
Kakashi is starting to feel like Gyūki is going to be the one to decide what to do with him. He still doesn't know why Shukaku saw fit to bring him to the others.
Gyūki appears to think that over. “Well,” He says. “We should probably take him with us.”
Um. What. Take him where? The surface, right? Nowhere else? Please say the surface, Kakashi thinks desperately.
"What about Chōmei?" Matatabi challenges.
"Chōmei knows the plan was to leave today. She knows the tunnels better than the rest of us; she'll be able to catch up."
Matatabi makes a face, but doesn't say anything else. There's a bad feeling in the pit of Kakashi's stomach.
"To the surface, then," Isobu adds delicately. "And after that-"
"Home," Says Saiken, and if it's a little thick no one seems intent on acknowledging it.
Home, Kakashi thinks, and tries not to focus on whether or not he'll make it home this time, or on how long it must have been for Saiken to wish for his own home so strongly.
If Kakashi never enters another cave in this lifetime and the next, it will be too soon.