Shinobi Isekai!

Resemblance

Sasuke sighed, his breath warming the mask on his face. He was leaning up against the wall outside the Hokage's office with one leg propped up beneath him and his arms crossed over his chest. Off to one side, his teammates, Naruto and Sakura, were speaking with no regard for the people around them. As usual.

"Ne, Sakura-chan," the dobe was saying. "What do you think happened? Kakashi-sensei left in such a hurry, it has to be an emergency—believe it!"

"Shut up, Naruto!" Sakura flipped her hair and scooted closer to Sasuke—as though he wouldn't notice. "It can't have been too terrible, since they called us here as soon as he came back. Don't you think, Sasuke-kun?"

Sasuke sighed again, leaning his head back against the wall. To be honest, he was also worried. There were few things that could motivate their sensei, and his daughter was one of them. If something had happened to Hana...

"Tch, teme, doesn't that mask get icky? Do you wash it?" Naruto's face was scrunched up and his head tilted in confusion before a wide, blindingly bright smile split his face. "Maybe I should start wearing one, too! We'd all match!"

"Oh, come on, Naruto," Sakura sniffed. "You'd just take it off all the time to eat ramen or something."

"Hehe, yeah, you're probably right."

Sasuke looked away. He'd gotten a lot of grief when he first started wearing the mask—Hana had, too, but she never seemed bothered by that sort of thing. His fellow students had harped on him much in the way Naruto just had, and his 'fan-club' had lamented the 'loss of his face'—blaming Hana for it all the while—before accepting it as a part of his 'mystique'.

Girls were strange.

They were right about one thing, though. The mask had been Hana's idea. After Kakashi-sensei—it was still weird to call him that—took him in, they'd shared a bedroom for a good six months. It only took her a week to notice he was avoiding the mirrors—it was probably less, but he hadn't noticed her noticing—and she went to her father for a mask. He'd initially refused, so afraid of seeming weak in any context, but her words cut his pride down to size.

"I imagine the only thing worse than seeing a corpse in the mirror is seeing a murderer."

That one phrase told him more about her than any of their conversations before or since.

The mask, coupled with a much shorter haircut, lessened the resemblance between him and that man. If it added to his 'mystique' or whatever, it made no difference to him.

The door to the Hokage's office opened, drawing all of Team 7's attention. Their sensei stepped out and raised a hand with a smile.

"Yo."

"Sensei, where did you go?" Sakura asked with a scowl. "You didn't even tell us you were leaving!"

"Mah, Sakura-chan," Kakashi held his hands out in front of his as if to protect himself from her anger. "It's not my fault. Hana needed my help."

He looked over his shoulder almost pleadingly at his daughter who sighed, brows scrunching in a fond display of exasperation.

"Mah, daddy. You're such a handful."

"What the heck, there are more of you?"

A lot of people spilled out into the hallway, one of them—a taller boy wearing a bodysuit and face paint—looking at Sasuke with wide eyes. The blonde girl beside him rolled her eyes and the red headed boy simply scowled. Their headbands marked them as Suna ninja, and Sasuke spent all of a moment wondering what they were doing in Konoha before he remembered.