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Iruka gets suspicious while they're getting gas.
They’ve just finished a job in central Nevada where Iruka can drive hours without seeing another car, Naruto slumped against the passenger window. The highways are long and straight, cutting across broad valleys framed by tall, brown hills. There are no trees here, just scattered shrubs in a rough poofball texture of sage and tan. In town, the Jeep's mirrors reflect the flashing neon signs of casinos. In the country, Iruka catches flashes of dark holes at the edge of his vision -- abandoned mines marked sometimes by old wooden supports, sun-bleached and cracked, or by gravel piles of mine tailings growing struggling shrubs. He sees more cows than people.
They stop for gas in Ely, Nevada, a small town with three casinos and a restaurant that promises to serve Iruka dinner in an old jail cell. Over the last week, Iruka has noticed that buildings in Nevada come in two styles: straight out of a western or weird mash up of The Jetsons and Cars. Clearly, the '60s of both centuries were good to Nevada.
Naruto loves it here, for reasons that probably mean Iruka’s a bad parent. He had to intervene after the first slot machine jackpot; luck is one of the most obvious ways that the demon twisting in Naruto’s stomach affects the world around him. There’s three thousand extra dollars in Iruka’s duffle, carefully packed away, and that’s as much attention as he plans to draw in a state where gambling is a major sector of the economy.
The job wasn’t a success. Demon deals never are. You do what you can with goofer dust to keep the hellhounds away, but it’s a delay of weeks at best. Gambling debts, Iruka thinks angrily: cliche and not worth it. Suicide would be a better bet. At least then you don’t know what comes next. Iruka stops that line of thought, pausing to rest his forehead against the side of the door where Naruto can’t see him. He leaves an oval shaped smudge in the beige dust. Iruka doesn’t mind the dust; it helps cover up the scratches in the paint.
On his way into the shop, Iruka pushes past a heavyset man with tattoos curling out from the sleeves of his flannel shirt. Redneck style here is slightly different than Iruka’s midwestern eyes are used to -- less farmer, more biker gang with a side of cowboy. Iruka is fitting in by way of plaid, dirt, and poverty. His beat-up-but-sturdy Jeep fits in here, and his race is less out of place than he expected, though everyone who takes the time to comment thinks he's Chinese. Closed-mindedness is one of the things Iruka worries about more as a parent than he ever did as a lone hunter. Iruka exchanges a nod and heads into the store to browse the chips and energy drinks.
Naruto was the last to use their shared, fraudulent credit card, so it's Naruto's bag Iruka has. He rummages through snack wrappers, xmen comics, and phone chargers looking for Naruto's lumpy frog wallet. Instead, Iruka finds a pair of grocery store reading glasses collecting crumbs and dust. It's an odd thing to worry a person, but the glasses stop Iruka cold.
He gives the glasses a cautious sniff. He smells frankincense, myrrh, and some kind of nutty essence a little like sesame. His stomach gives a queasy roll. These are “Hell Vision” glasses, homemade by passing through burning holy oil from Jerusalem. They're the only way to observe hellhounds, which in addition to their general invulnerability are also invisible. Iruka and Naruto had two pairs a few days ago, trying to protect Jason Frederickson from his abysmal choices. Naruto had told Iruka they'd been destroyed.
An itchy feeling starts at the back of Iruka's neck. He's remembering doors left open a few seconds too long and Naruto's sudden willingness to ask for to-go boxes, the way he always calls it a "doggy bag". Most of all, he remembers the job six months ago where everything had gone wrong. The moment Iruka had learned that desperation can make you rely on people better shot on sight.
"Eh, Iruka, what's up?" Naruto says sleepily, slouching against the gas pump while the numbers tick ever upwards. The sun hasn't made it over the mountains and the whole town is under a cool blue shadow. His eyes widen as he sees Iruka's glasses (tortoiseshell with 1.25x magnification) and Iruka's determined stride to the Jeep's back door. "What are you -- no, don't!"
But Iruka has already thrown open the door. In the back seat, next to the nest of blankets and extra jackets, a blurry shadow in the shape of a small pitbull lies belly up, one leg kicking softly and smearing darkness across Iruka's vision. First one then another spot of luminescent red appears in the part of the shadow that looks like a head. It's watching Iruka, and Iruka is unarmed.
He slams the door, dragging Naruto with him, thinking furiously about what he'll be able to get out of the back before the hound can reach him.
"Wait, she's my friend." Naruto's fingers dig into Iruka's bicep. Iruka isn't paying attention. His vision has gone oversaturated and too sharp.
"Where are the rest?" He can't see anymore outside the car.
Naruto goes limp, dragging his heels. "The rest of what?"
"There were eight," Iruka says crazily. He's trying not to remember the moment he'd met them, being introduced to eight invisible hounds of hell by a spacy medical student who didn't know why he'd woken up on another continent with blood on his hands and demon dogs in his wake. Iruka had killed that medical student for the sake of killing the demon inside of him. A cold creature, too smart by half, who had thought Iruka might be weak to beautiful men from his mother's country. He'd been right.
"She's the only one," Naruto pleads. "Her name is Soup."
"Soup?" Iruka says blankly.
Naruto puts out his lip. "She said her name's Biscuit and that it's a soup."
"Bisque," Iruka says automatically. "It's a soup -- like lobster or tomato." He has his hand on the back door. All their arsenal waits on the other side. He doesn't know why he hasn't opened it.
"What?" Naruto gives him a wary look, no less baffled. The dog hasn't busted through the door yet, and Iruka knows it -- she? -- could. He catches a glimpse of red eyes through the window and freezes, knees bent and ready to bolt. A shadow brushes against the glass, repetitive, leaving residue behind.
Iruka slowly straightens, disbelieving. The hellhound is... licking the window of his Jeep.
Naruto shakes Iruka's arm, eyes huge. He says quietly, "Please don't hurt her, Mr. Umino."
Naruto hasn't called Iruka Mr. Umino in years, not since 'Mr. Umino' was Naruto's fake substitute teacher (but real monster hunter) who stole Naruto from foster care and fled with demons on their heels. It strikes to Iruka's heart.
"Is she looking for a new master?" Iruka tries, tentative.
"She said she was taking vacation."
"She doesn't have anyone to take vacation from," Iruka says, going still. "The Hound is dead."
Naruto shrugs. He only knows that when the Hound appears, Iruka and Naruto survive. He doesn't know how carefully Iruka negotiates, what he does to make sure their deaths would never be worth more than their lives. Iruka has met two kinds of demon in his life: the cold and the hungry. The Hound was as cold as they came, without empathy or appetite. Hell's version of a walking gun.
"No demon could survive what I did to him." It sounds like an idiot's prayer.
"I dunno?" Naruto says.
Iruka shakes him, pulling him around to look at Iruka eye to eye. Iruka needs his full attention, needs the earnest, focused Naruto that Iruka sees only rarely, but always when it matters most. "Naruto. He has to be dead. It's important for him to be dead. He kills whoever he's told to. He only helped us because we were useful."
And because helping them had made it seem like the Hound had claim to the Kyuubi without having to actually take control of whatever was trapped inside Naruto.
"He didn't seem so bad," Naruto says, eyes sliding away. "Actually, he seemed kind of dumb."
Iruka has done mighty things to keep Naruto from seeing the Hound at work. The two of them have barely spoken except for one night six months ago, the night the spiritualist Orochimaru had demonstrated his new, stranger brand of exorcism and the Hound had nearly died, his consciousness sinking beneath that of his suddenly awake and very confused host. Iruka has seen the Hound in many bodies over the years, but that night the Hound had come prepared to seduce. He'd chosen his host for looks, cultural connection, and a touch of Iruka's deeply buried punk rock aesthetic. Which is how Iruka and Naruto had met Hatake Kakashi, a Japanese medical student with unnatural silver hair, who had learned all his very terrible English from cult westerns.
"That wasn't the Hound," Iruka said.
"Maybe," Naruto said again, voice gone mulish. "Soup said they were two people before and now they're one."
"Two?" Iruka says. It's not possible -- the Hound would never have left the host body alive. Possessing a living body encouraged hunters to try for exorcism; it left room for hope. What Iruka had done, to tie host to parasite, should have destroyed the Hound. It should have crushed him beneath the combined weight of an uncorrupted soul and a body no longer capable of supporting it. The two -- demon and human -- were too foreign to reconcile, a reactor gone nuclear.
"She said she and her pack didn't used to be dogs, but now her boss thinks they should be, so... they are." Naruto's nose wrinkles. He hates magical theory.
Iruka remembers Kakashi the medical student and his odd, sideways approach to the world. Of all the impossibilities he'd been presented with that night, the one he'd minded the least had been the eight supernatural death machines that only he could see. He'd sent them out for coffee, pizza rolls, and a Japanese-English dictionary. Of course, at the time, Iruka had been actively lying to him about what would happen to him when the Hound woke up. Maybe he'd have been less calm in an honest world.
Iruka tells himself what Naruto is describing is impossible; he's always tried to be a pragmatist. But a pragmatist would never have a half-demon boy in his backseat that he'd burn down the world for. Iruka opens the driver's side of the Jeep before he's even really aware of what he wants to do. He drives them the edge of town behind an abandoned building with cracked windows and a sign that indicates it once offered taekwondo lessons. He keeps the glasses on, and Naruto keeps his arm around Soup. Naruto has no trouble finding her, even when he can't see her. Every wag of her tail makes Iruka a little more cautiously hopeful. Hellhounds really aren't dogs -- except this one is.
The herbs needed for summoning are packed carefully in an old fishing tackle box. Naruto chalks a pattern into the concrete while Iruka loads devil's trap bullets into his gun and fills a holy water supersoaker. Soup bounces around them, barking. In the distance, Iruka hears the dogs of the town answer, all of them, all at once.
"Shush," Iruka says, forgetting she's not a real dog. But the bouncing shape of unholy darkness dips her head and drops her tail. Naruto gives her a delighted and approving shoulder rub. Iruka wonders if he's being buttered up.
No one comes when Iruka intones the Hound's name and titles in English or when he tries again in Latin, middle Persian, and questionable Sanskrit. They end up sitting on the cracked concrete in the shadow of the car, Iruka's disappointment too strong to blame solely on guilt over Kakashi, a person he only knew for a few hours, a person he hadn't hesitated to put down the instant Kakashi's death would protect Iruka's family. He puts his head down on his knees and admits to himself that he'd... admired the Hound. The demon's brutal competence and infuriating intelligence. The way when you worked with the Hound, nothing was ever muddied up by fear, greed, jealousy, righteous causes. The way there had been an almost-there humor behind his words -- bloody and cutting though it was. And in a life where Iruka rarely saw the same person twice, the Hound had been someone Iruka knew, a known quantity. A killer, but reliable in his choices.
It's human, Iruka thinks, he helped you; you got attached. The way people get attached to robot dogs that can't love you back.
Iruka feels his knees crack as he stands up.The guns won't bother the locals. The apparent devil worship probably will. "We should put this away before someone sees."
Naruto fiddles with the gun Iruka left on the ground. Soup rests her head on his thigh. Once again, Iruka is reminded that he's teaching Naruto terrible habits.
"Just -- one more thing," Naruto says. He drops another bundle of herbs into the burner. He repeats Iruka's incantation, but when he should say the Hound, instead he says, "Hatake Kakashi."
Soup leaps up in excitement. The man standing in front of them is slouching in a way the Hound never had, hands in the pockets of pants too big for him, worn dress shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows. But Iruka sees the Hound in the cool way he looks them over, eyes noting detail by detail. When he finally settles on Iruka, his eyebrow lifts at the way Iruka stares, and the desert dryness of his voice as he says: "Look what you did," that's the Hound, too.
It raises the hair on the back of Iruka's neck because he's learned the hard way that these are signs of danger, of a shark in the water. He brings up his gun; instead, the Hound -- Kakashi -- sighs and scratches the back of his head. Self-conscious? Iruka thinks incredulously.
"Are you in trouble?" the demon asks. "Because I have a final tomorrow."
"A final," Iruka says stupidly.
Kakashi looks off towards with mountains with studied indifference. "I'm much better at anatomy now."
Iruka can't stop the laugh or the horrified face he makes. Naruto gives them both a baffled look. "What? Why?"
Look what you did. Iruka is looking -- at Hatake Kakashi, third year medical student at Tokyo University, the First Hound of Hell, Assassin of the Crossroads. The spell Iruka cast deliberately tied the Hound to Kakashi's empathy and compassion, those fundamental human characteristics that demons lacked. Iruka expected both of them to disappear like an unstable subatomic particle. Instead they reached a compromise between foreign bodies unknown on any plane.
Iruka might still have to kill him. Iruka doesn't know yet, not really, what this entity is, and either half of it might object to the way Iruka killed both of them last year. But there's time to observe and see. Iruka's biased; the last time he decided to wait before shooting, he got Naruto.
"We found your dog," Iruka says, letting the end of the gun drop towards the ground.
"Oh," says the Hound, as though he hadn't sent her himself. He smiles, and Iruka wonders if it's a human smile, perhaps the first human smile a demon has made since creation. "Thanks."