Blame It All on Me. Part 1

Chapter 2. Nice Chat

When the girl came back to her senses, it turned out that she was lying on a riverbank, wrapped in a blanket that seemed to have come from nowhere. Under her head was a folded plaid. Two men were standing nearby and discussing something quietly. They were standing with their backs to her, but turned around simultaneously when the girl hesitantly tried to raise herself on her elbows and failed, unable to get out of the cocoon of the blanket.

One of them, brown-haired, reached for the mask hanging on his belt, but then seemed to have changed his mind, obviously realizing that it was too late. The second one – the one with silver hair and a strange eye – slowly approached the girl and carefully, as if not wanting to scare her, kneeled down next to her.

The girl at that moment managed to free herself a little from the blanket and, feeling something binding her slightly under her breasts, felt the bandage with her hand. Moreover, the bandage was under the dress. It seemed that while she was unconscious, she was undressed, albeit with good intentions. However, from the realization of this, she instantly flared up: there could be no doubt that those two had a good look at her.

She glanced at the man who sat down next to her with a slight hostility. He held out his hands in front of him soothingly and said something softly. However, the girl did not seem to understand him, and looked on at him with a mixture of fear and distrust, pointlessly pulling the blanket almost up to her chin.

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"And all this is because of you being your usual self," Tekiro nagged, looking at how Kakashi was trying to communicate with the girl unsuccessfully. "Honestly, was it that hard to leave at least one of them alive?"

"But who would have expected that?" Kakashi muttered guiltily.

He was slightly confused. Not only did the girl not say a word, but it also seemed that she was either deaf, or simply did not understand him – even a simple question about her well-being. However, they quickly figured that she indeed did not understand – she definitely heard everything perfectly, judging by the way she turned around at the sharp chirp of some forest bird.

"You – you should have," Tekiro kept scolding.

They had to make a decision: they were already pretty much delayed. Kakashi ruffled his hair thoughtfully. There were no settlements nearby, and even if there were, it would hardly be an unmistakable indication of where this girl was from. They did visit Hofu, however, discovering what was a consequence of a genuine massacre there, they quickly moved away from that ominous place.

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Despite the fact that the temple did not belong to the territory of Hi-no-Kuni, what happened there was somewhat alarming. In addition, in their haste to get the girl out of there as fast as possible, they did not manage to examine everything thoroughly enough: perhaps there were still survivors there, and someone might have needed help. Therefore, while Kakashi was dealing with the girl's wound, he sent Tekiro for a more detailed survey of the situation, although the latter did not fail to whine jokingly that it was unfair.

Tekiro returned after a considerable time, dark as a storm cloud. He confirmed that there were no survivors there, and the one who performed the massacre at that temple, apparently, possessed remarkable ninja abilities, given the scale and nature of the destruction. And these were clearly not the men who had been killed by Kakashi before. Kakashi looked at Tekiro gloomily: they knew exactly who it could be, given the location.

Kakashi almost thought to try to track him down, but Tekiro reasonably objected that this already required a special authorization from the Hokage, and he was forced to cast the idea aside. Besides, they could not leave the girl either, and they were expected in Konoha, their report much awaited, and going after Orochimaru alone would have been utter recklessness. He was not at all sure that they would have succeeded even if they had pursued together, even though a lot of time had passed since his last encounter with Orochimaru, and he was not standing still.