When it came to the news that a hundred-percent confirmed deceased shinobi suddenly reappearing, other hidden villages would've scoffed and dismissed the news as 'fake'.

But Konoha reacted differently.

They had the Nidaime. They had multiple scrolls of forbidden jutsu written by the Nidaime.

They were aware of Edo Tensei.

Sarutobi nibbled on his pipe, albeit a bit subtle to not show his fraying nerves to his shinobi.

He had a headache again.

"Sakumo is back, you say? And he is the Ghost?" the Sandaime asked, eyes narrowing in the direction of his elite scout team. "Are you sure?"

Shikaku flinched under that sharp scrutinising gaze. "I couldn't confirm it with his mask on," he admitted, recalling the blank faceless mask hidden under a heavy dark hood. "But the hood slipped down when we engaged him. It was the Hatake's silver hair, sir."

Sarutobi felt his breath hitched in his throat.

If Sakumo was resurrected as the Ghost—who has shown no alliance to any village whenever he interfered in the battlefield—then Konoha might be in danger.

They have not been kind to the man at all when he was alive—driving him to his suicide through heartless scorns and blames. The whole village was guilty of triggering Sakumo's suicide, including the people whom he had chosen to save instead of completing his mission.

If Sakumo returned with vengeance in his mind...

Well, Konoha was kinda screwed over.

Spirit of Peace.

The civilians have been whispering that name since the past three weeks. Stories of a cloaked shadow wearing faceless mask were spread across the globe—the unknown shadow that has been interfering with the war since these past three weeks.

The thing was a ghost.

Everything was useless against the spirit. Every kunai phased through its body. Paper bombs would explode, and the spirit would still stand there, cloak billowing as if the explosion didn't bother it at all. The spirit moved like the wind, phasing through everything like untouchable air, only to solidify when it landed a blow at the back of the neck that would knock its victim unconscious.

Every fight that occurred since the past three weeks would end up with both opposing sides calling in retreats as they hauled the unconscious (but relatively unharmed and still so very alive) shinobi back home to their respective village.

The five hidden villages suffered a mix emotion of bewilderment and anger.

The civilians, on the other hand, hailed the spirit as one of the deities that protected their people.

Now that Shikaku came with a report that the hailed spirit was actually one of Konoha's deceased shinobi whom Sarutobi has personally thought was horribly wronged by the village, he didn't really feel comfortable to know that it was running loose out there.

Inoichi clicked his tongue in that unnerving contemplating manner he used to do when he was worrying over something, thus successfully attracting Sarutobi's attention towards him.

"He gave a peculiar response when we addressed him as 'Sakumo', sir," he eventually added, lips pursed. "Though, I might say that something didn't really add up."

"Oh?" Sarutobi cocked an eyebrow.

"He was...," Inoichi trailed, pale blue eyes trailing to exchange a glance with his teammate. "Odd."

"Inoichi-kun?" Sarutobi pressed.

Inoichi exhaled a deep breath and grimaced.

"I tried to enter his mind," he started, voice trembling. "I didn't get to break through completely into his mind, but I've seen enough to notice that there was something peculiar about his mind."

Inoichi then hesitated, eyes slightly widened in a muted horror.

Sarutobi waited silently and patiently.

It took a hand on each of his shoulders for Inoichi to snap out of his shaken trance. He shot a grateful smile towards his friends, shoulders squared as he reported;

"It almost felt like he has more than one consciousness inside him—," he hesitated again, grimacing when he added, "—like multiple souls are being contained in one vessel."

That did not sound good.

"We think that was the reason he was resurrected with the sharingan, sir," Shikaku said with a solemn voice.

"And possess Uzumaki's chakra reserve," Chouza added. "We suspected that someone out there is experimenting with the Nidaime's Edo Tensei, sir."

Sarutobi resisted the urge to swear at the implication of that theory.

He did not need anyone out there revamping the Edo Tensei when they were at the peak of a world war. The Ghost has been equally offensive against all of the five nations whenever he popped in the middle of the battle to stop their fight.

The Ghost was neither their friend nor their foe.

But if someone out there has been toying with Edo Tensei, this Ghost might only be a test run before they moved on to something bigger.

Either way, Sarutobi had a horrible headache again.

His boy was slipping.

Minato didn't know what had transpired between Kakashi and Obito during the Kannabi mission, but it changed the last Hatake.

Never before would Minato ever thought that he would see his first student so...disoriented.

Kakashi barely talked after he returned from the mission. He didn't offer any reports despite being the captain of the mission, but instead, he simply stood silently beside Rin—the single remaining eye was wide and dazed while his face was drained from all colours. At first, Minato has dismissed it from shock and exhaustion—after all, Kakashi was able to quickly complete the mission and doubled back to pursue Obito and rescue Rin.

He completed that mission too.

The Kannabi bridge was destroyed and despite the strange interference from the Ghost, Konoha now has the upper hand in the war.

Kakashi completed his mission twice faster than the expected time.

He then pursued Obito and rescued Rin.

He wasn't able to rescue Obito.

All in all, by Konoha's standard, the mission was a glowing success.

But humans were vicious.

Obito was killed in action, died under an unforgiving doton jutsu.

Naturally, considering how much the Uchiha valued Obito's existence, it has caused a severe backlash to Kakashi. Scorns were directed towards the boy—ironically just like the similar scorns that were directed towards Sakumo—as they blamed him for abandoning his team in favour of completing the mission.

(The irony almost made Minato retched.)

And what that made it worse was that there was no body for them to grieve.

They have sent squads to scavenge the area, only to be utterly baffled at the trails of charred bodies of Iwa-nin and the disappearance of Obito's corpse.

The only thing that they found was a Konoha hitai-ate that was stained with dried blood. The metal plate was dented on the right side.

The hitai-ate that was now in Kakashi's unforgiving grip.

The pup never let go of that hitai-ate, clutching it everywhere like it was his last lifeline to reality.

Perhaps it was.

Hatake Kakashi was slipping.

Kakashi was never her favourite.

Out of all three of her mate's students, Kushina favoured Obito the most.

It was not because she was biased that the boy was an omega just like her, but because Obito defied all traditional stereotypes of their secondary gender—going toe to toe with the prodigious Kakashi and didn't even flinch when Kakashi tried to assert his ranks in the hierarchy dominance was one of the many reasons Kushina adored Obito so much.

The knucklehead brat was a definite special snowflake and Kushina really wanted to see Obito inherited the hat.

Kakashi, on the other hand, was her least favourite.

He was a cocky brat—reasonably so, yes—despite doing a decent job shouldering the burden as the Hatake Clan Head at the age of eight. The youngest Clan Head in the council, and he never failed to attend all of the meetings as the head of one of the old clans in the Konoha, despite being the only member of the clan.

Kushina found that Kakashi's hard-edged adult-like behaviour was sort of creepy.

But she never blamed Kakashi for that.

Sakumo's death has changed the boy.

The boy was colder and far more aggressive in asserting his ranks—both as an alpha to his teammates and as a Clan Head among the council. It was something that Minato defended as the product of Sakumo's traumatic suicide and Kakashi's own needs to prove himself as a proper Konoha shinobi, unlike his father.

The boy has a personal mission to bring the Hatake clan back to the top Konoha, believing that Sakumo's suicide and the failed mission was a disgrace to his clan.

Kushina didn't like it.

Kakashi was wrong.

But she didn't blame him. The boy grew up too quickly—far, far too quickly—for her own taste. He forced himself to be an adult when other children his age didn't even graduate from academy yet. He trained hard. He has no mercy when he killed. He wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice his subordinates if that was what it takes to complete the mission.

Cold.

Hatake Kakashi has an ice-cold heart.

And the village encouraged him.

Sometimes, Kushina just wanted to pack up and go back to live in the ruins of Uzushio. She was done with Konoha.

A good number of the councillors in Konoha were corrupted, power-hungry warmongers.

Encouraging a grieving and impressionable boy to become the cold-hearted killing machine was something that was not above their already low morals.

But the boy that was in her living room was not that cold-hearted killing machine.

They have carted Kakashi away from his path to the empty Hatake compound and guided the boy back to their home. The boy was still in his trance-like condition by the time they sit him on their couch. His single black eye was wide and dilated, his left arm was still stuck in the sling—and he wasn't going to remove that until the medic gave him the 'okay' even if Kushina had to resort to violence to stop him from doing so—while his right hand had a death grip on Obito's dented and bloodied hitai-ate.

Kushina has never seen Kakashi so broken.

"Kakashi."

The boy didn't move. He simply rolled his eye to the side where Minato was standing by the archway.

Minato smiled. "Bath is ready," he announced, barely hiding a flinch when Kakashi stood in an almost mechanical way, shuffling past him like a mindless edo tensei—the dented hitai-ate was still in his hand.

Kushina grimaced. Minato let out a long sigh.

The scent of distress and worries flooded the room the moment Kakashi disappeared into the bathroom, suffocating the atmosphere and making it so hard to breathe. Kushina strode towards her mate, wrapping her arms around his body and burying her nose into the side of his neck. She exhaled, drowning his distress and worries with her own scent, allowing a deep soothing purr to erupt from her throat. The pounding of his heart relaxed, and his suffocating scent was muted under her comforting one as he was all but melted into her embrace.

Stereotypical belief would say that it was the alpha who shouldered the protective role in a relationship, being the emotionally reserved and the stronger partner between the two.

It was a stupid belief.

"We're going to pile," she decided then, exhaling once more to dull his worries as she nudged him to the path heading to the little room that housed her nest. "All three of us."

Minato jerked, blue eyes widened in pleasant surprise and confusion.

Kushina grinned cheekily.

His surprise wasn't unwarranted. It was an intimate thing—to pile—because it enforced a strong family bond between the participants. Parents did this to their pups, as piling was important to enforce the parental bond with the little ones, to accustom the young ones with the sense of security of the soothing presence of the pack's omega and the protective presence of the pack's alpha. It was a form of emotional therapy—to drown in each other's scent and falling asleep in the pile of tangled bodies and comforting cuddles.

And the best place to do this was at an omega's nest—the little safe haven created for the sole purpose of creating a sense of comfort and safety—of which was nigh hard to be invited in if you're not trusted by said omega.

"You'll allow him inside?" her mate blurted out but did not resist when she pushed him in that direction. "You are not fond of him," Minato tried again, eyeing her with hopeful confusion.

"You promised Sakumo," Kushina smiled, eyes softening. "And I know that he's like your own pup now."

Minato looked like he was torn in between hugging her in a crushing embrace or to break into an ugly sobbing.

Kushina embraced him again, breaking into an amused smile when he finally made up his mind.

"Thank you," he sobbed to her hair.

Ugly sobbing, then.

Obito's hitai-ate was cold.

Cold, like how Obito's left hand had been the last time Kakashi held it.

Cold, like how his own chest felt when he had to leave Obito behind and escaped with Rin.

Cold, like the dull grey stone in the graveyard.

In a sense, it was hilarious.

This grave was empty.

There was nothing underneath!

There was nothing to grieve over.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

But Kakashi grieved.

Had he chosen wrong? He chose to complete the mission first, pushing himself to the point of chakra exhaustion to complete it as quickly as possible before doubling back to rescue Rin and support Obito.

It was supposedly the right choice.

He knew that it was the right choice.

His father abandoned his mission to rescue his teammates and was scorned by the village for it.

Hadn't Kakashi chosen right then? He didn't make the same mistake as his father. He didn't abandon the mission. He didn't completely abandon his friends—he just put them as the lower priority as compared to their mission.

Wasn't that the right choice?

Didn't choosing the opposite resulting in Sakumo being disgraced?

It was logic. It was the most logical situation. Kakashi trusted Obito to survive until he returned to aid the rescue. Obito was the only omega who dared to continuously challenge him, defying their ranks and difference in skills. Kakashi knew if there was anyone he could trust to rescue Rin, it would be Obito. The older boy worked hard, and when his sharingan activated, Kakashi just knew that Obito would be someone far more powerful than the Uchiha, or Konoha, has ever expected him to be.

Kakashi trusted Obito to rescue Rin while he rushed to complete their mission.

Obito trusted Kakashi to complete the mission and come back to aid the rescue.

They parted with that promise—a budding trust of friendship.

Wasn't trusting teammates a part of Konoha's shinobi creed?

"Then, why?"

Kakashi sunk to his knees by the grave, pressing his bare forehead to the cold stone.

"What did I do wrong?"

Why did the village scorn him?

He completed the mission. He came back for his teammates. He kept his promise to Obito by keeping Rin safe until they reached Konoha.

His father didn't complete his mission and was scorned.

Kakashi completed the mission and was also scorned.

Then, what was the right thing to do?

Why did they wish him dead when he has avoided his father's mistake?

What was the right choice then?

Was not all lives equal? His father's squad had been mainly composed of beta and alpha. Was that the reason? Because Obito was born special? Because he held more value to the village's military power because he could produce stronger shinobi? Was that it?

Was not all humans equal?

"What did I do wrong?" he whimpered, breaking into tears right at Obito's grave.

It hurt. It genuinely hurt him to hear people wishing him dead. He tried to fight it off. Tried to remind himself that his sensei didn't wish death upon him. He knew that Minato loved him. He knew that Kushina has a grudging fondness for him too. Their fondness were genuine. They invited him to a pile tonight.

He hadn't been in a pile ever since his father died.

It almost broke him into tears.

Kushina has wrapped him in a hug, drowning him with her soothing scent—something that was the closest to a mother that he had ever have—while Minato has thrown his arm around their tangled body, tucking Kakashi under his chin and close to his body, wrapping Kushina's soothing comfort with loving protectiveness.

It made Kakashi felt safe.

It comforted him for a little while.

It gave him the illusion of a family.

But then the village's scorns came with vengeance the moment he nodded off to sleep, haunting him with the words of how much of failure he was—of how much he has disgraced his name as a shinobi.

Dad. Is this how you feel?

Was this how his father felt?

Should he end it like his father too?

Should he?

Should he?

Should I?

The words rang again in his ears, filled with scorns and hatred.

I should.

Though, before he could do anything, he was halted frozen in front of the grave with a gentle soft voice.

"So much pain, little one."

Kakashi jerked upon hearing that calm voice, hand instinctively reached for his katana, only to scowl when he realised that he was only wearing his sleep clothes when he snuck out of Kushina's nest to visit this graveyard. No weapon in reach, he crouched, readying a defensive jutsu when he looked up to meet the gaze of his companion.

He dropped his defensive stance when he saw the pale lavender eyes.

"Hyuuga-san," he greeted politely, despite the nagging feeling at the back of his head that told him that he has never seen this Hyuuga before.

But then again, the Hyuuga was a big clan. There was a possibility that Kakashi hasn't met every Hyuuga.

Her red painted lips twitched slightly, but her serene expression didn't change.

Kakashi found himself to be transfixed with the presence of his companion.

Under the glowing moonlight, the woman looked like a goddess.

She quirked a smile that softened her pale delicate face, gliding towards him like an ethereal being. She crouched slightly, moving one hand to gently tip his chin up—the tip of her long nails tickled the skin of his jaw. Her thumb brushed over his left eye, just barely touching the flattened socket and Kakashi allowed it, single black eye fixed on her byakugan. He noticed her short rounded brows—a symbol of nobility—and he had to wonder why someone of a high-standing like her would be wandering in the graveyard at this kind of hour without any bodyguard in range. He inhaled deeply, couldn't resist the sweet pleasant scent that came from her pale long hair—oddly almost similar shade of his own hair—and it took an effort to not cave into his urge to nuzzle to her soft palm.

"So much pain," she murmured again, tipping her head, a single trail of tears trickled down her cheek. "So young, yet so tortured," she bent to his level, taking him off guard when she suddenly pulled him into her embrace, effortlessly cradling him to her chest.

Pressed against her chest, Kakashi noticed the sheer luxury of her white kimono and wondered what exactly was her position in the Hyuuga clan to be endowed with such luxury.

He eventually caved into his needs for comfort, burying his face into her neck to inhale her