28 Chapter 27

UNKNOWN UNIVERSE

"What did you say?!!"

"I- I'm- I'm sorry, Sir! It was my fault for leaving the place unattended! I'm sorry, Sir!"

Two men in black robes could be seen in some kind of void. Though their faces couldn't be seen but it was obvious from their toned that one of them was angry while the other one was afraid of his superior. There was silence for awhile between them before the angry men spoke up.

"Say, what is it again?" he said after calm down a little, still a bit of anger there.

"One- One of the soul sli- slipped away from my eyes and- and-"

"And?"

"-and I heard that 'he' the one that handled the soul." the scared man said in a low voice as to not want to irritate his superior anymore than that.

Even so, it seems like his effort was pointless since his superior became more enraged at the mention of 'he', made the scared man became more scared of him to the point of fainting.

"Where did 'he' sent the soul?!!" the superior asked urgently with the mix of angry toned.

"I- I don't know, no one- no one knows! I'm sorry!!" said the scared man.

Tense atmosphere could be feel around the two men. The scared man from before ended up on his knees with his head on the floor like a 'dogeza' position while begging for forgiveness. The man was not scared of the penalty that would be given to him due to his mistake, but he simply scared of the being stood firmly in front of him. This proved that the so called superior was not just a superior, but a more higher being than those superiors.

"You! Go tell those elites to go find the soul no matter where it is. And don't come back till they find it! I will have a talk with 'him'. Now, go!" the man said then walked away from the place.

The scared man who was on the floor hurriedly stood up and walked to the opposite direction of the other man earlier while still shivering in fear. The two went on their business, while one regarded the soul and the other one regarded 'him'.

*********

(Yakiniki Q)

YOSHI'S POV

'What am I doing here?' I asked myself while sweat dropping at the situation I was in right now.

Just a minute ago I was on my own seat, so how did I ended up seating between these two jonins? I never expected something such as eating lunch with the important people in Konoha would happened to me. Just by having them around made me feel suffocated, now you tell me to stay with them for a long time? Sigh. I just hope I wouldn't faint here.

For me, this people was not just characters, no, they're never be mere characters to me from the start. Even back then when I was watching the show, I always thought of them as real people. The reason? Because all the techniques they used except ninjutsus could be copied by other people in real life. For example, taijutsu or in English term was hand-to-hand combat. People like martial artists must be interested on learning their smooth and powerful fighting style like the Hyūga Gentle Fist, where it focusing on targeting the pressure points of the opponents and thus immobilize them. For weapon handling like throwing shuriken was not impossible to learn, just hard. Who knows, maybe someday someone would become an expert in throwing weapons. The point was, their fighting techniques was real and if anyone were to mastered them, that made them 'whatever-characters' in real life, right? Made sense or not, I don't care. That's what I personally think.

If I meet a person who admired Kakashi to the point of learning all of his fighting style or more so behave like him, I would run away. Kakashi was not to be underestimated, if his fans could be like him, than that's gonna made him Kakashi but in real life. Right?? Whatever. Well, that's that.

For now, I need to focus on the matter at hands. There's no way I could leave here even though I ask nicely, so I already gave up on that thought. Even though I have a plan in my head...well, let's just say that it's not a suitable plan for this unexpected situation. It would be useless anyway since I've been sandwiched by the two Jonins, and said Jonins were Sarutobi Asuma who sat on my right and Might Guy who sat on my left. In front of me was Kakashi, followed by Yuhi Kurenai on his left while on his right was Ibiki.

'Wha-! Wait! What's Ibiki doing here?'

Okay, I'm not being racist here, I just don't expected him to be here. Sigh, anyway, when I was too absorbed in my thoughts, I kinda heard someone called my name but I don't know who since I've been eating my meat throughout the 'whatever thing they talked about' to notice. So I did the sensible thing to do when someone called your name. I stopped eating the meat, still holding my chopsticks and looked up to see all the eyes were on me.

'Damn. This is embarrassing. Remind me to pay attention to the conversation in the future.' I thought while sweat dropped.

"Uhh.... Yes?"

"I asked how've you been so far?"

I landed my eyes on the person asking me, turned out it was just Kakashi. Then I spoke.

"Uhm, good. Same like always." I answered shortly, not having any other good idea to response to the question because to be honest I'm not okay. I was having a headache with everything that happened to me the moment I woke up here, and pretty sure I won't die anytime soon which I really pissed of. But they don't have to know that.

Few seconds of silence, maybe because of everyone was awkward of my short answer or they just had nothing to talk about. Either way, I shifted my attention away from the adults back to the steaming meat, waiting to be eaten. As I was about to pick it up with my chopsticks, I suddenly heard Kakashi called out for me again.

"Yes?" I said while looked at straight into his eyes.

"I forgot to introduce my friends earlier. This is Kurenai," he said while pointing his thumb to her "he's Asuma and the green one's Guy," Asuma smiled gently at me while Guy greeted me with his signature sign and a bright wide smile that almost blind my eyes since I was just beside him. "and I think you already know him but in case you forgot, this guy name's Ibiki." he said while Ibiki looked at me with his stoic and expressionless face.

"My name's Yoshi. Nice to meet you all." I said while bowing a little to the adults.

After the small introductions, we continued eating while talking about various topics, not that I heard nor I care, so I just paid full attention on the meat instead. I would eat as many as I could because who knows when I would be able to eat free food like this again.

Even though I said I was paying full attention on the meat, my ears can't completely tuned out some of the things they said. I heard they talked about everyday stuff, training, ect. All about mundane stuff that didn't piqued my interest at all. I listen and listen and listen until at one point, I heard they talked about something serious.

"I heard from father that there was some intruders who tried to infiltrate our village. Kakashi, isn't you the one who went check it out with Kotetsu and Izumo?" asked the son of the third Hokage.

'Now that's what we called hot news, baby!'

I looked at all of them silently and judging by their confused expressions, most likely some of them didn't know anything about this infiltration attempt. Doesn't the Hokage would tell every shinobi to stay alert and tighten the security when this kind of situation happened as to not let the intruders in? Why there's no such order yet? Was it confidential and only the certain people know? If so what was the reason and why did they talked about it here in front of a 8 year old kid who probably might understand what they're saying.

'If I remember correctly, there's no any infiltration attempt be done this early in the show except when Kumogakure tried to kidnap Hinata but failed. Unless it happened off screen since right now the story isn't even started yet. Maybe it was just one of those things that happened everyday but they just didn't showed it in the show because it's not important, I guess. Sigh, let's just hear their conversation for now. I hurt my head enough with all the thinking.'

I let out a small sigh before paying attention on the conversation. It seems like I lost some of the information earlier because when I came to, they were already change topic.

'Well, at least I now know about the infiltration, and Asuma said Kakashi was the one who went to catch the intruders with Izumo and Kotetsu. Maybe I could fish out some information from them?'

I thought for a while before decided to drop the idea of gathering information as to not want to get involve in the case.

'Nah, doesn't have anything to do with me, so there's no need to be bother about it.'

As to not to be the only one be left in the dark, though I think I already am, I started to fully stopped eating my meat and gave all my ears to the adults. My eyes landed on one person to the others as they talked, tried to follow the flow of the conversation.

After a while of being a listener, Guy from beside me suddenly asked me some questions which I answered all of them shortly with a bored expression on my face since they're just simple questions that people used to get to know each other.

"My YOUTHFUL Yoshi! I have some questions for you!" he said.

"Hm. Just ask away and you don't need to shout Guy-san."

"Okay! *Cough* Where are you from?"

"My mother's womb."

"...."

"...."

Everyone was dead silence at my answer. Never expected such answer to come out of my mouth. At last, Kakashi spoke up first and thus broke the temporary silence.

"*Cough* He doesn't remember where he came from, Guy." Kakashi said, tried to cover up the embarrassment he felt for his friend.

"Ah, Ok.... Then, next question. How old are you?"

"Eight, probably." I replied.

"What's your hobby?"

"Don't have one."

"Your favorite food?"

"I'm not picky."

"Anything you hate?"

"Being alive, maybe."

A short silence and few exchanged glances between the Jonin happened before the next question been asked.

"Your dream?"

I paused at the last question. I kinda hesitated to answer the question because I don't have a dream whether in my last life or current life. I faced myself to the side ended up me meeting eyes to eyes with Guy. Somehow his face looked dejected with all my previous answers. However, I could see a little bit of hope in his eyes. I directly knew that he was be super upset with what I'm about to say next. But at this point, I don't care of everyone opinion about me nor did I care about their reactions towards my pitiful truth of life, so I just answered him with honesty while looking back at the table.

"I don't have any dream and will not have in the future too."

'I don't have any dream, but I do have something I want.' I thought to myself.

As soon as I answered the question, I was been greeted by silence. I looked up to the sight of sympathy from them except Ibiki who somehow still has that emotionless expression on his face. Well, not that I care.

'I tired with all this sympathy. The people in the past felt sympathy to me too but did nothing to help me, even when some of them knew that I was being abused.' I frowned while thinking about the past before quickly buried the memories to the back of my head.

As there was still no one volunteering to speak up yet, I decided to excuse myself. The longer I stay here, the longer I would be wasting my time.

"I'm sorry, but I think I need to go now." that seems to wake them up from their stupor because Asuma hurriedly said...

"Ah, yes! Right, it's okay. We're about done here anyway. We also have to get back to our work. So, let's go out together." Asuma said while trying to lighten up the mood.

"I'll wait outside." I said then walked away to the entrance.

I notice from my peripheral vision that the others followed suit behind me except for Kakashi who went to pay for the meal. As soon as I saw Kakashi came out, I walked over to him and told him that I need to go. He nodded and gave me his infamous eyes smiled. After all was done, I turned to the other adults and bowed to them before walked away from there in a leisurely manner.

THIRD POV

The Jonins watched Yoshi's back as he walked away. Kurenai who has a frowned on his face, suddenly asked a question while still looking at Yoshi's figure that started to disappear from their line of sight.

"I've been wondering about something. Kakashi, you have been with him from the start. What's with the bandages on his hands and neck?"

"Hm? Who knows?" Kakashi replied back with a question.

"Oh, so you don't know what was under those bandages?" this time, Guy was the one who asked.

"No, I did know what under the bandages, just I don't think it's my story to tell." Kakashi said as a reply then walked away from the restaurant with his hands in his pockets.

"Damn, Kakashi. Just say that you don't want to tell us. Don't need to be all cool like that. Sigh, sometimes you made me jealous, you know that." Asuma who started catching up to Kakashi and walked beside him said with a slight smile on his face.

The others also started walking close to them and talked about various things before they separated at a junction. Ibiki was the only one that left and loyally walked beside Kakashi in relax manner but still didn't lose the look of strictness.

"What do you think about him?" Kakashi started the conversation first.

"I met him briefly last time, so I don't know what to think about him. But after I heard what happened to him lately and the state he was in right now, I felt a little bit of sympathy to him. Of course, that doesn't mean I trust him."

"Ma~a, he looks fine to me." Kakashi said with his nonchalant voice.

"Better be careful than sorry, Kakashi." Ibiki retort back with a stern voice while gave him a short glare.

"Right, right." He said with a sweat dropped.