In a flicker, Kakashi was back in his familiar office.
The shadow clone responsible for watching the village was currently spinning in the Hokage's desk chair so fast it was a complete blur. It spun around a few more times, the high-speed whistling of the wind cutting through the quiet room, before it finally slammed its feet down and came to a dead stop.
The clone gave Kakashi a blank stare and dispelled itself without a word.
A heavy wave of vertigo hit Kakashi instantly, leaving him with the violent, nauseating memories of high-speed rotation. He leaned against the edge of the desk, rubbing his temples with a grimace.
'I'm an asshole,' Kakashi thought. The phantom sensation of the room whirling around him wasn't pleasant.
Once his equilibrium settled, he left his office and made his way down to the secure levels of the Intelligence Division to find Inoichi Yamanaka. The facility was cold, lit by the faint glow of chakra-conductive lamps. Kakashi found the Yamanaka clan head reviewing files in a central monitoring room.
"Lord Hokage," Inoichi said, rising quickly with a respectful nod. "I wasn't expecting you today. Is there anything I can help with?"
Kakashi reached into his pouch and placed a scroll on the table before unsealing it, a severed head of a man appearing in a puff of smoke- not an unusual sight for Inoichi- but what surprised him was the fact that the head was trying to talk, with a seal over his mouth, and looked far too furious for what should be a dead man.
"This is one of the members of the Akatsuki, and as you can see, he's immortal. I want an expert opinion before I decide anything. His mind; I want you to check it"
Inoichi nodded, quickly getting over the fact that the head was very much alive after hearing the mention of the Akatsuki.
'An immortal,' Inoichi mused silently, his hands already beginning to glow with a soft, blue sensory chakra. 'Traditional interrogation relies on the fear of death or physical and psychological breaking points. If he lacks these, his subconscious walls will either be nonexistent because of pure arrogance or anchored by a technique, or perhaps whatever makes him immortal.'
"I will probe the outer layers of his consciousness first to see if there are any hidden protections or traps," Inoichi said aloud, stepping closer to the table and palming the head, not seeming to mind the pointless thrashing it was doing.
Kakashi watched as Inoichi closed his eyes, feeling Inoichi's chakra seep into Hidan's mind with apparent ease, the process taking only a couple of seconds, odd even for civilians. While civilians lack the methods to protect their minds properly, it's still their mind, and it will often subconsciously reject another consciousness trying to impose itself on its space.
Kakashi's worry was proven correct. A minute later, Inoichi broke out into a heavy sweat, his body tensing as if he had just plunged into a life-or-death battle. Kakashi didn't hesitate. He placed a hand firmly on Inoichi's back, guiding his own chakra straight into the Yamanaka's system to piggyback off the technique and join the fight inside.
Appearing inside the mind, Kakashi saw a phantom of Inoichi trying to wrestle back a shadow-like figure that had him wrapped up in dark tendrils. Kakashi flared his Conqueror's Haki at the entity, watching it wince and shrink back like a creature afraid of light. Rushing forward, he pulled Inoichi back as the creature melted away into the darkness of the mind.
"Lord Hokage."
Kakashi held out a hand, closing his eyes as he felt the entire confines of Hidan's mind.
'There you are.'
Kakashi reached for the blade at his hip, unsheathing it in a fast, deliberate motion; a crescent-shaped slash flew toward the thing that had hidden itself, and Kakashi felt surprise from whatever it was before it dodged the casual cut with ease.
"So, you're not just some mindless manifestation made to protect this mind. Come out; let's drop the act of a monster."
"You are an anomaly, Hatake Kakashi," a voice echoed through the headspace, sounding like a chorus of overlapping whispers. The entity paused and stepped into the light, its eyes narrowing as it truly registered the crushing pressure of the space around them. "No... You are entirely unlike the mere food of this world. That massive chakra, and that oppressive spirit you flared earlier... it carries a weight. Why does a higher being walk among food?"
Inoichi stepped up next to Kakashi, visibly shaken by the feeling this phantom gave off. "Lord Hokage... that chakra doesn't belong to the Akatsuki member-"
"Silence, trash!"
The figure snapped, looking at Inoichi like he was a particularly disgusting bug.
Kakashi stepped in front of Inoichi once more, gesturing for him not to step forward again.
"Even if I took the time to explain this to you, a mere parasite like yourself wouldn't even begin to understand the weight of humans. You, who have only known how to take, can never grasp what it takes to nurture and create."
The pale, marked entity didn't voice its anger; instead, a thick, suffocating aura of chakra wafted from its form. The immense pressure expanded through the headspace like heavy smoke, threatening to crush the entire environment.
Kakashi quickly met the force with his own.
A devastating wave of silver-hued Conqueror's Haki erupted from Kakashi, exploding outward in a massive, shimmering ripple of absolute willpower. The two forces clashed violently. The sheer impact of the spiritual collision sent shockwaves tearing through the darkness, making Hidan's entire mindscape shake and warp.
In the middle of the clash, Kakashi sheathed his blade and rested his right hand on the handle. His left thumb flicked up, unsealing it.
Instantly, a surge of flickering silver Conqueror's lightning arced wildly from the hilt, further destabilizing the space around them and making the crushing force pushing down on the pale figure many times stronger.
"Before I send you on your way, tell me your name."
The pale figure buckled under the immense weight, the silver lightning fracturing the ground beneath its feet. Yet, instead of panic, a raspy, echoing cackle broke from its chest. It knew its limits here; this projection was only a fraction of the power it had invested in Hidan, nowhere near enough to contend with the overwhelming force pressing down on it.
"Otsutsuki..." the entity spat out between sharp laughs, its hollow eyes burning with a mixture of malice and twisted amusement as its form began to dissolve under the pressure. "...Jashin."
As the name echoed through the fracturing headspace, an immense, towering silhouette materialized behind Kakashi out of pure silver willpower. It was a massive, ethereal wolf, its fur composed of crackling silver lightning, its crimson eyes burning with absolute ferocity as it bared its fangs over the entire landscape.
Kakashi's expression remained entirely flat. "Very well then."
Before Jashin's projection could even register the shift, Kakashi vanished in a violent burst of speed. He instantly materialized directly in front of the pale figure. His hand flashed, drawing the blade in a single, seamless motion that overlapped perfectly with the massive, snapping canine fang of his silver wolf avatar.
"White Fang," Kakashi whispered coldly.
A brilliant crescent of silver lightning tore through the dark mindscape, cleaving the entity in two.
Jashin leaving a parting "Until next time, clansman," as he faded away. Kakashi and Inoichi were ejected from the crumbling mindscape just in time to see Hidan die, his face sinking in and appearing many years older before he died, no longer immortal.
'As I suspected. Such power came with a clear, absolute cost. Hidan was nothing but a miniature chakra fruit that Jashin was allowing to ripen. But that begs the question: is he an alone rogue member, or does he have a partner?'
Kakashi wondered as he helped Inoichi off the floor; the man was clearly shaken.
"You have the day off, Inoichi, and I don't have to say that today's events are classified, correct?"
"Yes, of course, Lord Hokage, not a word."
Inoichi agreed without hesitation; he didn't want to even think about that… whatever the hell that thing was, it filled him with dread.
Kakashi nodded and turned to look at Hidan's head once more as Inoichi walked out of the room, wanting nothing more than to spend time with his wife and daughter.
"Perhaps you'll be immortal once more, Hidan, but only for a bit."
Kakashi chuckled at his own dark joke before a shadow clone poofed next to him and wordlessly grabbed the head and vanished to hand it to Orochimaru.
'It's a shame that I didn't get to study his soul, but who would've guessed that the religious cult had an Otsutsuki member as a god…. Well, maybe it did make sense after all; the humans of Kaguya's time worshiped her as well. So, Kaguya wasn't the only one playing god. Jashin came and started a cult with immediate results. The prospect of immortality would sway any human, and that's the hook. A far more detailed plan than the emotional breakdown. So, he was not only getting the chakra of those who took the deal after they died, but the chakra of those sacrificed to him. The amount of chakra he has consumed can't be small.'
Kakashi sighed, just when he thought he knew what to expect, but he guessed that was his fault for getting curious.
- Chapter End -
Hope you enjoyed what i did here ;)