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“How come everything only goes to shit when I’m away?”
Kakashi dutifully kept his eyes closed, hoping that Mei would believe him to still be asleep and thus leave him in silent bliss for a few more moments. For an instant, he thought he’d actually managed to fool her, but a rush of cool air as well as the sudden taste of dust in his mouth and the contact with the hard ground made him realise she’d just kicked him out of bed instead. He groaned and turned on his back, blinking blearily until he could see her frowning face.
“To be fair, you’re always gone,” he replied. “Nobody told you to go live on a volcano, Ms. Fire Mage.”
He was pretty certain the only reason why he didn’t get a burst of lava in the face was that Mei didn’t want to damage a house that wasn’t theirs, but Kakashi still let himself believe he’d gotten one up over her. She sighed at him and let herself fall across his lap as she stretched, putting further strain on his back in revenge.
“We’ll have to get going soon if we want to reach your student early enough to continue before the night falls,” she pointed out. “And I won’t let your lazy ways get in the way of us finding Obito.”
The kiss she pressed to the corner of his mouth took the bite out of the words, and Kakashi sighed, seeing the wisdom of Mei’s words. It had been years now since they’d gotten words of Obito, and although the desert nymph made a habit of taking spontaneous trips, xe had never been out of contact for more than three years before.
“Alright, I’m up!” Kakashi agreed as he sat up, bringing Mei up with him. “Let’s get on the road.”
“I don’t remember your student trying to kill us last time we visited.”
The tone was deadpan, but the words themselves were anything but. Kakashi was far too satisfied to let Mei’s silent rebuke stop him as he stepped through the different traps that blocked their way.
“They’re putting my lessons about teamwork to good use,” he sighed wistfully, recognizing Naruto’s touch in one of those traps. Even the look of the house once they finally got past all the traps and narrowly avoided a fireball seemed like an amalgam of his three students’ personalities.
He turned to look at Mei. “Weren’t you the one who complained that they didn’t care enough about me? Nothing shows their care more than them setting up so many presents for me,” he finished with a grand gesture to his surroundings.
Mei shook her head with what Kakashi was sure was fondness and threw an arm around his neck. A slightly strange gesture from her considering that she wasn’t usually very tactile, but perhaps he was just growing on her. “Wood nymphs have long memories, Kakashi, so I don’t believe any of your students are about to forget your abysmal teaching attitude.”
The door opened before Kakashi could reply and he grinned as the face of his cutest little student appeared. Mei’s hand slapped over his mouth before he could tell Sakura exactly that however, and he finally understood why she’d slung an arm over her shoulder a few moments before.
“Have you seen Obito recently?” Mei asked, blunt as ever. “Because xe hasn’t been around, and since you’re dating Sasuke we thought you might know where xe’s been recently.”
Sakura frowned, and Kakashi had the stray thought that if Mei had let him sleep longer that morning then he might have something of value to bring into the conversation. That and the fact that Mei still hadn’t removed her hand from his mouth. He weighed in the advantages and inconvenient of licking her hand versus having to live with a wet patch on his mask for the rest of the day.
“Don’t even think about it or I’m licking you back,” Mei glared as Sakura called Sasuke through that nifty magical wood nymph network Kakashi still wasn’t supposed to know about. The visible part of his face must have conveyed how unimpressive he found that threat because Mei stuck out her tongue until a trail of flame was visible on it, which was rather more threatening.
“Sasuke says Obito left a few years ago to ‘find xemself’ or something, so we don’t know where xe is,” Sakura interrupted them, coming back from her chat.
“Does your other boyfriend know anything about it?” Kakashi asked, getting truly worried now. If even Obito’s favorite cousin didn’t know where xe was, then their chances were rather dire.
Sakura let herself fall down onto a chair that seemed built out of a single piece, probably another sign of her growing abilities, Kakashi mused. She’d barely been able to grow a small sapling the last time he’d seen her.
“Naruto did mention that there were spontaneous burst of fire and ice in his area,” she mused. “And intermittent screaming, but it’s been going on for the last few years and he assumed his forest was… haunted…”
She seemed to realise exactly what she was saying at that moment, and groaned in dismay. Outburst of fire and ice simultaneously definitely sounded like Obito going through a magical overload, but those tended to be short and rarely lasted for more than a few days.
For the last few years… It was a sobering thought to imagine that Obito had been lost all this time, and that Kakashi had barely worried about xem in the meantime. A glance to his left revealed that Mei’s face was pinched with an emotion rather similar to his own. When their eyes crossed however, the guilt in her eyes changed to determination, and Kakashi felt confidence fill him in return.
“We’ll go to that forest then,” Mei said, fire in her gaze. “And get Obito back from whatever keeping xem in magical overload.”
It was a good thing that Kakashi had taken to wearing his face mask in permanence, for neither he nor Mei hesitated in rushing forward when they heard Obito’s screams through the mouth of the cave they stumbled into after three days of stumbling through Naruto’s forest. There was a sort of dense fog floating in the cave, and Kakashi didn’t need to see the sickly green colour of it to know that its effects couldn’t be anything good.
“Do you truly think you can walk through my home and ruin my master’s plans?” A malevolent voice rang out around them, and Kakashi stepped closer to Mei until they were back to back so they wouldn’t be separated. Yellow eyes glowed through the fog, and Kakashi thought he could discern a black and white silhouette from which the green vines that covered the cave originated.
“Especially with the noxious fumes you’re currently inhaling,” it continued, sounding gleeful. And that explained rather well why it wasn’t attacking then. Kakashi grinned behind his mask. He’d gotten a mage to attach air filtering charms on all his masks after the first he’d nearly suffocated because Mei and Obito had made too much fire for him to breathe, and Mei’s very nature meant she was immune to nearly all types of fumes. This monster wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Soon enough,” it continued, “you’ll find your-”
It didn’t get a chance to finish before a fireball caught it across the face, followed by a stream of lava courtesy of Mei. Kakashi didn’t wait for further signal before he ducked low and threw a handful of kunai in quick succession, each of them attached to ninja wire and building a razor sharp net around the creature. There was no need for words between him and Mei even as the creature tried to goad them into making a mistake. With Mei at his back, Kakashi watched streams of fire run through his wires and reach the creature, setting it aflame. Without further hesitation, he darted forward and unsheathed his ninjato to slice the monster’s head off, and watched the rest of it burn into dust.
As he turned, he saw Mei step out of a hell of her own making, vines haphazardly burning in her wake. Kakashi looked at her, at the smug expression tempered by worry for Obito and all he could think was that he had never seen her look more radiant. Almost as though she could hear his thoughts, she looked at him with a smirk and he had to break the moment.
"Excellent, half the room is burning, the other half freezing." And Kakashi was right in the middle of both, too hot and too cold at the same time.
“Don’t blame me, Obito’s been creating a whole new ecosystem here for the last six years!” Mei was quick to say, prompting Kakashi to look toward their friend. Xir right half was encased in ice, while the left was still ablaze, and it seemed like it had been that way for a while.
Obito had finally stopped screaming and seemed to be coming back to consciousness at last. Kakashi couldn’t ascertain that for sure until the outpouring of magic that was coming out of Obito’s body had stopped though and his best friend opened xir eyes.
“I can’t believe you didn’t visit Kakashi once in the last six years,” were Obito’s first words, and Kakashi grinned smugly at Mei. He didn’t know Obito had been plugged onto the same wood nymph network his three little students had set up, but for once he was glad the added knowledge was not used to make a fool out of him.
All that good will was dashed when Obito shook xir head in disbelief. “I mean, I know you mages live to like, a thousand years old, but Kakashi’s just a frail lil’ human, he must have been so lonely.”
“What have you been doing for the last six years?” Mei asked indignantly before Kakashi could protest his supposed loneliness. Obito at least had the good grace to look sheepish at that.
“I have been sleeping, mostly,” xe admitted. “And uh, screaming.”
“For six years?” Kakashi asked, turning to Obito in disbelief. Granted, they’d known Obito had disappeared for a while, but to know xe’d been stuck in that cave for the entirety of those six years was still hard to believe.
“For six years,” Obito confirmed, looking away.
“See, this is why I said we should meet up more often,” Mei pointed out. “And maybe create our own ecosystem while we’re at it, because the three of us were not made to live in the same type of environment.”
She quickly stepped forward to support Obito, who’d tried to take a step and nearly fallen on xir face in the attempt. Not to be outdone, Kakashi stepped up to Obito’s other shoulder to take the other half of xir weight.
“While we’re at it, one of you could also learn teleportation to get us places quicker, because it took us forever to get here,” he said, only to get bonked on the head courtesy of Obito.
“Humans can learn magic too, you’re just too lazy for your own good. You won’t be able to use that excuse forever,” xe pointed out.
Kakashi cheerfully pretended he’d gone temporarily deaf, and made sure to make Obito stumble as many times as possible on their way out of the cave in retaliation.