Work Text:
Kankurō wakes up to a bare trickle of foreign chakra flowing into him, hands on his back, face down in the sand. His hands are secured with carefully wrapped ninja wire and his legs pinned pinned by the enemy hovering over him. Complete overkill — Kankurō had fought against Hoshigaki Kisame until he'd blacked out, so he couldn't roll over and murder whoever's hovering over him even if he weren't restrained and pinned. He had thought that either Hoshigaki would slice him in half the moment he dropped or that a combination of chakra exhaustion and exposure would do him in nice and quick. Waking up captured and at the mercy of....someone wasn't supposed to be on the menu.
It's not Hoshigaki, considering this enemy has a smaller build than Kankurō, but it could be Uchiha Itachi. Or some other S-class freak. Or any random enemy.
Kankurō can't even muster the strength to thrash or struggle. He only manages to wiggle a little in protest and grunt out, "Fuck you."
His enemy shifts — stops pinning his legs — and the chakra feeding into him cuts off as fingers begin to tug at the wire around Kankurō's wrists. "I knew this was overkill," says a wry voice that makes Kankurō freeze. "Sorry."
It can't be.
When his arms are free, Kankurō is rolled onto his side by hands that touch him gently. Crouching there in the sand at Kankurō's side is Nara Shikako. The wind whipping over the desert has tugged some of her bangs out of her high braid. Her hands on him had been warm and solid.
"It seemed like it'd be awkward if you killed me while I was trying to help you," Shikako explains with a shrug.
"Sparky," Kankurō gets out.
She smiles at him.
It's kind of sad.
"That's me," she says.
Kankurō had seen her die. Years ago. He'd watched Nara Shikamaru cling to her dying body as it vaporized from the sheer, unstoppable torrent of chakra pouring into her through that damn sword. He'd felt that alien power brush over him and then retreat, that feeling Gaara had said was her. But now here she is again.
"You're back," Kankurō says, nonsensically.
"Can I keep giving you chakra?" she prompts gently, hand already outstretched.
Kankurō nods, and holds still as she reaches out for him. She's just as solid now as she was a few moments ago. Her chakra is clear and normal, properly clarified of her elemental affinity. "Where did you come from?" he asks when she's given him so much chakra he can finally hold a conversation again.
She shrugs noncommittally. "Long story." She pauses, looks around, and adds, "Did you have a team with you?"
Right. Right. Context for this moment pours back into Kankurō's otherwise empty head. "Gaara's been captured. Temari went back for help. I went forward."
Shikako's lips press thin. "Akatsuki."
Kankurō nods. "Gaara told us. That you warned him. Thanks."
"It didn't do any good," Shikako says.
It meant a lot to Gaara, Kankurō kind of wants to argue, but he knows that that's not what she means. She means: it hadn't kept Gaara safe.
"Will you help?" He doesn't mean for the question to come out desperate, but it does. He can't wait here for Temari to get back. She might not even come with reinforcements — she'd flown for Land of Fire because it was closer, but they might say no. She might have to decide between meeting up with Kankurō and going all the way back to Suna for help, and Kankurō loves his village but he doesn't think they're going to bother fielding a rescue team against opponents that Gaara couldn't even beat.
He doesn't know where the hell Shikako has been or how she's not dead, but he doesn't care. He doesn't even care that he doesn't know anything about her skill level, since last he saw her she was a genin with a head for strategy and not much else.
It's probably Nara Shikako or no one, and Kankurō can't do this alone.
"Yeah," Shikako says. Easily, casually, like she's been waiting for Kankurō to ask. "Let's go."'
She springs to her feet, dusts herself off, and gives Kankurō a hand up.
Kankurō has enough borrowed chakra to keep to the pace she sets, but just barely. He kind of suspects she's holding herself back just to let him keep up, which under normal circumstances he would find insulting but in this case is a relief. He's not sure how much help he's going to be in a fight, but he doesn't want to be left behind.
While they run, he has just enough breath to explain exactly which Akatsuki members they're chasing after. Shikako takes in the hasty report without flinching, like she'd been prepared to maybe have to fight S-class missing nin today.
Shikako's sensing is even better than Kankurō's, way better, and she's able to lead them away from the scant tracks they're following to run on a direct intercept course to their enemies. It takes them West, into Land of Wind, over weedy scrubland.
They eventually crest a hill and slap eyes on their target. Two black dots, weaving towards the horizon. Kankurō can see the exact moment they notice they're being followed — the shorter figure hands what must be Gaara over to the other. The newly burdened dot must be Kisame, and Kisame heads straight on the way they'd been going. The other one is Uchiha Itachi, and that one starts coming straight towards them.
"Shit," Shikako mutters. Her hands fold into seals and her chakra twists. She drags her hands across her face, leaving a dark smear of shadow there, and then she reaches out to do the same for Kankurō.
She makes the motion slowly enough that he could dodge, but he doesn't. He might as well trust her.
The shadow spreads over his face with a cool, feather-light touch that Kankurō can tell isn't even messing with his facepaint. It's just a hint of chakra, and it turns the desert scrublands into monotone greys, like the color has all been sucked out.
"Sharingan protection," Shikako mutters, like it's not wild that she has such a thing, let alone that she's willing to show it to a Suna ninja.
Does Sasuke know? Kankurō wonders, a little gleefully, imagining Shikako kicking Sasuke's ass across some lush green training field on the regular — but then he has to wonder: does Sasuke know? Does he even know Shikako is alive? Nara Shikamaru definitely doesn't. Would Leaf tell Shikako's genin teammate but not her twin brother?
There's no time to ask, even if Kankurō thought that asking would get him anywhere; Uchiha Itachi has arrived and noticeably paused at the sight of Shikako.
"You," he says. He manages to sound both threatening and perplexed.
"I get that a lot," Shikako acknowledges.
"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," Itachi goes on. "Roots hide many things—"
Itachi breaks off, leaping aside based on some instinct and barely misses being impaled by several sharp shadow stitch tendrils. Then he has to dodge again, because they curve to follow him, and then the fight is on in earnest.
Kankurō is best suited for defense and ambushes. Chasing an opponent down and wrecking their shit is more Temari's strong suit. Also, Kisame had trashed his best puppet in the same fight where he'd stolen most of Kankurō's chakra for his stupid ugly sword. But it doesn't really matter that Kankurō doesn't have much to add to the fight in terms of power or strategy, because Shikako just keeps going.
She pulls out a sword, and Itachi meets it with a kunai. She flings pre-written seals from her other hand, using some kind of sleight of hand. A lot of them just seem to be fancy self-directed exploding tags, but others just flutter inertly to the ground. Itachi pulls a second kunai and starts parrying them by cutting them out of the air before they can land or explode.
Even when it's clear he's trying to cast genjutsu on her, she doesn't lose a step. She fights without being afraid to make eye contact. Itachi disarms her with a particularly skilled twist and thrust of his kunai and Shikako's hand lights up with visible chakra to parry Itachi's next few strikes, fending him off once, twice, three times with bright flashes of chakra when the kunai meets her chakra-coated hand and then she's whipping out a second sword with the same sleight of hand she's been using on the seal tags.
If you'd asked Kankurō what he thought a grown-up Nara Shikako would fight like he would have said like Shikamaru, but more vicious, probably...but what's in front of him is way more than that. It's a level of combat that Kankurō can't approach. He can barely follow it at some points, when they're both rapidly using body flicker and replacement.
Nara Shikako faces Uchiha Itachi without any preparation and the fight ends anticlimactically, with Shikako springing free of the fight, darting back as fast as she can to put space between herself and Itachi like she's panicking, only for her to suddenly skid to a stop after a few scant minutes.
Itachi stops, too, when he runs face first into an invisible barrier. The chakra matrix of the barrier ripples and shimmers in a dome over Itachi's head. Anchor points across the ground outside the bubble light up, too, showing where the barrier is anchored.
"Holy shit," Kankurō says.
Itachi strikes the barrier with some technique Kankurō doesn't recognize, but the chakra bubble doesn't so much as wobble. He says something, but the sound doesn't travel.
"I'm thinking poison," Shikako says. "You have something airborne? Maybe something that will leave him alive, ish, for interrogation?"
It would be understandable, he's pretty sure, to just kill this S-rank missing nin and not worry about transport to an interrogation cell. But Shikako went through the trouble of catching him neatly, so Kankurō says, "Yeah," and fishes a package of longsleep powder from his coat and tosses it to her with a chakra string attached to make sure it lands right in her hand despite the wind whipping over the desert.
"Thanks," Shikako says. She tears the top open and keeps it closed with chakra like you're supposed to, although Kankurō can't imagine where in the hell she'd gotten training on Puppet Corps poison packets.
He's really wondering how in the hell she's going to get it inside the barrier without letting Itachi out, but she just...sticks her arm in through the barrier. Itachi tries to get out, fails, and then tries to stab her and also fails — his kunai goes straight through her hand like it's a trick of the light.
The longsleep poison fills the barrier and Shikako withdraws her arm as easily as she'd put it in.
Itachi continues his escape attempts inside the barrier. Kankurō approaches cautiously. Shikako had been solid earlier. And she'd certainly seemed solid when fighting Itachi, too. It was probably a technique of some kind, but Kankurō is still spooked.
She's impossibly strong, impossibly skilled, and he hasn't heard anything about her since she died right in front of him years ago. Kankurō never lost any sleep over it, because people die all the time and he'd barely known her, but it's not like her death hasn't had an impact. It stalled Gaara's push for Kazekage. It tripped up diplomatic relations with Leaf. It's even slowed Kankurō and Temari's rank progression.
It hadn't been their fault, and Leaf had never blamed them in particular or Suna in general, but she had been — is — the daughter of Leaf's Jōnin Commander. The student of Sharingan no Kakashi. Tsunade's favorite. Naruto's best friend.
Had she just been hiding this whole time? That seems insane.
"I really want that long story," he says. "Because — you were dead, right? Definitely dead?"
She looks at him, sidelong, as Itachi quietly slumps to the ground. "I died," she confirms. "Nara Shikako died. I'm...I had a sealing accident. Different from how she died, probably."
Kankurō stares at her. He doesn't know what to say to that.
Shikako shrugs a shoulder. "It's not a very believable story and it's not really relevant. Is it?" She bites her lip. "You're Kankurō. I'm Shikako. We're friends and we have to go get Gaara back. So let's go corner Hoshigaki Kisame in this desert and worry about the details later."
"Only a real Leaf ninja would give a speech like that," Kankurō gripes, and then he sighs. Maybe she's just bullshitting him, but who cares? Kankurō can play politics and other guessing games after he's got Gaara back. "Yeah, fuck the details. Let's go.".
They leave Itachi there, collapsed on the ground under the barrier, and Shikako sets the same pace as before. She wasn't even winded by the fight.
This leg of the run is much shorter than the first, because the fight with Itachi hadn't stalled them for very long at all. Before they come into view of Kisame again, Shikako asks, "How quickly can you move while hiding?"
"Not this fast," Kankurō says. That's kind of a lie — if he had full chakra reserves and didn't need to worry about anything else he could keep this pace up under his puppetmaster technique for a short sprint, and longer if he had a puppet to ride on top of during, but that's not the situation they're in right now so it's not worth mentioning.
Also, even though Kankurō is pretty sure that he and Shikako won't ever again be in a position to fight to the death, it's far from certain. Always better to be cautious about admitting what you can do if pushed.
Shikako gives him a sidelong glance — she can probably tell he's lied by omission — and then says, "You're going to have to catch up. We really don't want Kisame to get Gaara where he's going, even if they will be down a member."
Half an hour ago, Kankurō would have called that crazy, but now he just nods. She probably won't even need him for the fight.
"Just get Gaara away from him and leave the fighting to me," is Shikako's last piece of advice, and then she outpaces him easily.
If he hadn't been slowing her down, she probably would have finished this all hours ago. Kankurō tucks his emotions about that away — a maneuver he has a lot of practice with, being Gaara of the Desert's older brother — and slips into his puppetmaster technique. It cuts his travel speed almost in half, but he's really not eager for a rematch with Kisame and has reason to believe, at this point, that sending Shikako up against Kisame without any back up isn't signing her death warrant.
The most important part of puppetry is keeping your mind completely focused on the goal. Fancy tricks and skilled maneuvers are great, but most of the time stabbing and poison is enough to get the job done, and you just have to make sure you don't stab or poison anyone you're not supposed to. Kankurō is used to springing ambushes on mixed groups of friendlies and enemies, and in the end this is nothing much different from sneaking up behind Iwa nin that Temari is hassling so that Kankurō can steal their mission scroll or kill them or whatever.
It's normal, he tells himself, it's fine, and he probably has the best back up he could ask for under the circumstances. He just has to get Gaara and book it.
Kankurō can hear the fight before he can see it, the crash and crunch of jutsu, the bang of Shiakko's exploding tags. Then, as he gets closer, Kisame and Shikako talking shit to each other — "Whoever you left behind to distract Itachi won't have lasted very long," is the first thing he hears Kisame say. "I'm sure he'll be kind enough to leave enough behind to bury."
"Are you admitting you wish you had back up, Kisame-san?" Shikako asks, her tone all polite surprise.
"No," Kisame says."I'm going to enjoy killing you myself."
Kisame is looking more disheveled than he'd looked during his fight with Kankurō that morning. He's lost his ugly hat and the bottom of his red cloud Akatsuki robe is undeniably a little charred. The dry, shallow scoop of desert land that Shikako has cornered him in has streaks of glass and groups of ruined cacti.
Gaara is slung over Kisame's shoulder like a sack of rice, unconscious still. But not dead. Probably.
He'd better not be dead.
One of Shikako's main advantages, besides the location of this fight, is that Kisame has to keep a hold on Gaara and wield his stupid, huge sword with one hand while keeping his guard up and not letting Shikako take advantage of the entire arm he can't use. Kankurō doesn't know how long Shikako can last against the chakra-eating sword, but getting Gaara out of the line of fire can only help.
Kisame's determination to not give Shikako any opening to his unguarded flank works in Kankurō's favor; with Kisame focused entirely on the opponent he can see it makes Kankurō's job almost easy. He just circles around the fight, leaps out of the way of any stray attacks and is careful to keep his chakra tightly coiled and his steps light. This never would have worked against Itachi, and it would have been pointless to try it when he'd been fighting Kisame alone, but with Shikako taking up all the attention it's almost...easy.
It helps that exactly when Kankurō lunges forward to wrest Gaara away from Kisame, Shikako's shadow twists and darts out at her feet and there are suddenly explosions under Kisame's feet. Maybe that's how Kisame's robes got scorched before? It makes it child's play to jab a sensitive nerve on Kisame's elbow with all the force and chakra he can muster and then lift Gaara onto his own shoulder. He's out of arm's length before Kisame can do anything about it — his arm will be numb for at least sixty seconds — and Kankurō doesn't stop retreating once he's started.
Shikako will fight way better without having to worry about collateral damage. Kankurō hides Gaara under his puppetmaster technique and heads back the way they came, angled off a few degrees in case Itachi has somehow woken up and gotten back on his feet. It will also mean probably missing any possible back up (or in other words: Temari) who might be trying to catch up with him, but if anyone actually needs back up, it's Shikako.
He runs until he has to either stop or drop his disguise, and decides that hiding and looking Gaara over is probably for the best. There are a lot of convenient crags and caves in this part of the desert, since they're still so close to Land of Rivers, and Kankurō selects one at random and drops a low-energy genjutsu over the entrance. It's just big enough to hold him and Gaara and Kankurō lays his brother out with hands that tremble a little.
Gaara doesn't sleep. Kankurō can count the number of times he's seen Gaara unconscious on one hand. But this is some kind of jutsu, some Sharingan bullshit because Itachi had just looked at Gaara and he'd dropped. He has a strong pulse and good breathing but he doesn't wake up. Not even when Kankurō prods his chakra.
Mysteriously unconscious from bullshit Uchiha jutsu is better than dead, Kankurō reminds himself. It's better than Gaara still being in the clutches of people who want to rip his bijū out. And Uchiha Sasuke will probably know how to fix whatever this is. He probably won't even be an asshole about it.
This is a disaster, but it's not unsalvageable.
More than an hour later there's a scrape of feet against sand and rock outside the cave. The deliberate kind a skilled ninja has to make by choice. Shikako is standing there when Kankurō looks out, her hands in her pockets and her shoulders slouched. She's obviously been fighting, but still only looks barely tousled. She's for that same slumped-shouldered bored look that Shikamaru favors. Like she's just gotten done with something needlessly time consuming but not, ultimately, difficult.
Kankurō is really glad Shikako is on his side. He scoots out of the cave to join her. "Do we have to keep moving?"
Shikako yawns. "No," she says. She rolls her shoulders, a motion Kankurō has seen Temari make after a good spar. "I mean, we should eventually? But Akatsuki will have to realize Itachi and Kisame failed before sending anyone else."
Yeah, he's not really clear on the mission timelines and check-in expectations for secret S-rank missing nin organizations. "How long do you think that will take?"
"Took about three weeks for Deidara and Sasori." She shrugs. "Maybe shorter this time, though. They'll be expecting it, and I think they probably had some kind of meeting planned."
"Deidara and Sasori," Kankurō repeats, not sure he's understanding correctly.
Shikako nods. "I kind of," she says delicately, "expected you to be using the Third Kazekage." It's exactly the tone of Temari reminding him to be grateful and use this or that gift.
"We're still checking the puppets for traps," Kankurō says numbly, the excuse slipping out almost by route. He doesn't even know how to get into the other hold-ups, especially the political shit storm and its many, many fractions. Everyone's got an opinion about the mysteriously appearing human puppets. "Did you really—"
She waves a dismissive hand. "Yeah, but then I didn't stick around and warn anyone Gaara was in danger, so it was kind of wasted effort. Sloppy."
"You couldn't have been sure of a warm welcome," Kankurō says in her defense. Gaara is still alive and not having his bijū sucked out, so Kankurō's not really in a mood to nitpick the exact method of the rescue.
"I was more worried about having to stick around and explain myself." Shikako glances away — like someone looking for an exit — but she sighs rather than rabbiting off like Kankurō half expected. "I'm just so tired of explaining, you know?"
Kankurō doesn't know. He doesn't know at all and he is still desperately curious. But friendship is about working out what your friends want and then figuring out how to give it to them, and Kankurō is used to living without knowing jack shit about anything.
"You don't have to explain," Kankurō tells her. "It's probably none of my business. But will you wait here until Gaara wakes up? He'll...want to see you."
She agrees, clearly relieved, and then visibly pauses. "...How did they knock him out?"
He tells her about Itachi dropping Gaara with just a look. "Must have strained his Sharingan because he was weeping blood on the retreat," Kankurō adds.
Shikako's face twists disgust first and then, glancing over Kankurō's shoulder towards the cave, an almost devastating level of concern. "Okay," she says. "Okay, new plan. We should move. We have to take him to Tsunade. She'll be able to wake him up."
Needing the Godaime Hokage to fix whatever Itachi did is enough to send Kankurō scrambling back into the cave to pick Gaara up before he asks any questions, and when they're on the move east he doesn't waste any time yet asking questions like Are you sure? or What did Itachi do to him? because obviously Shikako is sure and as previously established Kankurō doesn't need an explanation for every damn thing.
What he needs to know is: "Will she really help?"
Shikako glances at him, just briefly, just enough for him to see that she's worried but not panicked, unhappy but not hopeless. "Sand is still an ally, right?"
Kankurō nods.
"Then she'll do it. She's Tsunade. And I'll talk to her."
Talking to Tsunade sounds like it will probably involve a lot of that explaining that Shikako just said she was trying to avoid, but Kankurō isn't going to look yet another weird Leaf bullshit gift horse in the mouth. So he just says, "Thanks," and follows her back towards Land of Fire, pretty sure she can kill her way through any extra S-rank missing nin who try to get in the way.