An Imperial Influence

[Kakashi Hatake]

The pair of shinobi charged down the musty corridor, taking corners at full speed with little regard for safety. Kakashi took the lead; being able to see a fair distance ahead and through the walls gave him an obvious edge in the event they were ambushed. With the walls being as tight as they were, it was nearly impossible for the average person to tell what could lay around each corner. The duo soon found, though, that their fears were seemingly unfounded. They soon enough came to the end of the hallway, having met no resistance.

“Where’s the way out?” Kito asked, glancing at the plain, unpainted wall in front of him. The walls on either side of the corridor were similarly doorless, the last one they’d seen being some 10 meters down around the last corner. “Maybe the exit was back through one of those doors?

Kakashi shook his head. “I checked them with my sharingan on our way past. They were all empty rooms, similar to the where we were kept.” The masked ninja knew that what looked like a dead end was likely a warded doorway, based on how the other doors were treated. The trick was in locating and removing the warding.

“You can’t see where any of the wards are?” The younger shinobi glanced around, hoping in vain to find some sort of hidden button or false wall, but finding nothing.

“No,” the scarecrow muttered. “The seal must be different; I don’t see anything.” He removed the glove from his right hand, gently running it along the wall for any raised surface that could indicate an etching. “Maybe…”

“But if you could see the others, why not these?” The genin furrowed his brow, thinking for a moment. Sighing, he tipped his head back and glanced up at the cobwebbed rafters; they too were of no help to him.

“It’ll have to be brute force then,” Kakashi said, pulling a paper bomb from his belt. He placed the scroll flat against the untreated wall, adhering and priming it with a small chakra infusion. He and Kito walked back down the hallway, waiting around the corner as the former Captain detonated the charge. As the smoke cleared, they returned to find the wall entirely untouched. “The same as my room,” Kakashi said. Were they trapped until their captors returned?

“Wait, Kakashi, look!” Kito was crouched in the dust, furiously wiping away at the thick carpet of debris. “The explosion moved the dust and I noticed this!”

The jonin glanced down at the boy’s findings, his eyes widening as what was most assuredly a sealing ward revealed itself. Around the size of a manhole cover, the glyph was quite ornate, with intricate scroll patterns and complex swirls. As Kito finally finished clearing the symbol of dust, Kakashi wondered if perhaps this glyph was too complicated to break with a simple imbalancing. The others had more or less been polygons with a few symbols here or there, but this one was an order of magnitude more complex.

Before he could worry over it for long, the genin began tracing the the symbol with his fingertips and mumbling to himself. After a moment he nodded, a muttered “Got it,” escaping his lips.

“What do you mean?” the silver haired shinobi inquired. “You understand this symbol?”

“Sort of,” Kito replied, pulling a small bottle from his pocket. He twisted the cap off and dabbed a small amount of dark liquid onto his fingertip. “It’s the Miu family seal. Or well, it should be. It’s missing something.” In one fluid motion he scrawled a large ‘S’ shape through the middle, followed by another similar swoosh at a slightly different angle. Almost immediately, a loud clunk issued from below their feet.

“Impressive work,” Kakashi said, smiling under his mask. Minato had truly taught his protege well. He caught a quick glance at the small bottle the genin had produced: Ink. Smart boy, he mused.

With some doing, the two tugged free the false floor, sliding down the rusty steel ladder beneath it. As they both touched down they turned, spying the dim glow of moonlight behind them. With renewed vigor, they sprinted for the exit, stopping just short and staring downward at the treetops below. “We’re...on a mountain,” Kito muttered.

“Seems like it,” Kakashi confirmed, sighing. It would take them the rest of the night to get down the cliff in on piece. Even if they hurried, the lack of climbing equipment made it nearly impossible to do so without injury. Their wardens had left the last puzzle as both the simplest and the most difficult.

The round of falling rocks from below suddenly dragged the attention of the fleeing shinobi downward, the two watching as a dark figure raced up the cliffside. The enormous shadow leapt hither and thither, expertly climbing from landing to landing on a direct course toward their location. As panic rose in their throats, they could only stumble backward, away from the ledge. The ninja duo fumbled for their weapons as their pursuer came into view.

“Wait, put the kunai away Kito.” Kakashi let out a sigh of relief as the familiar form of a massive wolf landed lightly near the cliff’s edge and took a seat. The scarecrow sheathed his chokuto and gave the canine a quick bow, which was returned in kind by the somewhat winded worg.

“Friend of yours?” the genin inquired, mouth slightly agape. “Is he...friendly?”

“Friendly enough,” Kakashi said, chuckling softly. “Climb on, he can get us back to the village in record time.”

The two ninja swung their legs over Fenrir’s back, taking a firm grip of his thick fur just as the mighty beast took off down the mountain and back toward Mokugakure.