kakasaku, space sci-fi AU
Sakura tried not to stare, but she had never seen anyone so extensively modified. Not that it would normally be apparent, but somehow the man’s synthetic dermis had been torn away from his left arm and he hadn’t seen fit to replace it, leaving the metallic structuring and artificial sinew exposed from his elbow down.
Curiosity got the better of her and she traced the unnaturally smooth palm of his synthetic hand, noting that the nanofilament plating was a grade she had never seen used for biomedical purposes.
She looked to his face and noted cracking in the skin around his left eye and wondered just how much of the real him was left. Not completely conscious that she was doing it, she lifted a hand and gently swept the coarse, gray hair off of his forehead.
Sakura nearly came out of her skin and threw herself back from the table, crashing into the cabinets behind her and scattering supplies everywhere.
Less than twelve hours ago, the man had been little more than space junk hauled on board by accident with everything she had actually been trying to scav. She had seen his medical scans, had realized how theoretically possible it was he’d survive being exposed to vacuum because of his mods, but hadn’t actually expected him to live.
The smart thing would have been to drop him right back out the airlock, but she knew she couldn’t. Why did she give herself these headaches?
“So, a scavver and a… medic? A nurse?”
Kakashi. He hadn’t offered her much more information than that. What she did know was that sometimes she forgot he was there entirely despite her ship’s relative compactness and other times he irritated her to distraction with questions and prodding.
This was one of the latter moments. With the ship on auto-pilot en route to the nearest port to offload scrap and her passenger, they had little to do but share space and wait.
“Neither,” she said. “I’m just a scavver.”
He raised a dusty eyebrow slowly at this. His left eye, she had realized shortly after he had woken, was also artificial and while the red of the iris was barely noticeable at a glance, the dull incandescent glow it emitted in the dim was rather off-putting.
He tilted of his head, indicating the rear of her ship and the makeshift medical bay. “So, all that medical equipment back there? Just for looks?”
The hunter was there and then dead. Sakura barely had time to panic that they had found her, oh gods, they had found her, before the body hit the ground with a dull thump. Her brain hadn’t even properly registered the sound of the gunshot despite the fact that Kakashi was right there holding the weapon.
Sakura swallowed hard and tried to catch up. She had never seen anyone take down a Hunter. Their enhancements made their too fast to hit and too strong to overwhelm. The Alliance relied on them for a reason.
“You’re one of them,” she murmured, with more surprise than fear. She had dealt with this man critiquing her library of trashy novels all week. He wasn’t what she imagined as one of the Alliance’s faceless killers.
Kakashi expression was torn somewhere between regret and melancholy. “Formerly,” he said. “When they send a squad after you, you’re not meant to come back.” He looked at her then and a wry smile twisted his lips. “But maybe you know more about Hunters than most?”
It was more reassuring than it should have been to hear him making a terrible joke of it. Sakura sucked in a deep breath to steady herself and then offered out her hand to him. “Haruno Sakura,” she said. “Formerly a doctor with Alliance Research and Development.”
Something like recognition sparked in his eyes. Maybe he knew the story or maybe he’d just heard rumors about the bounty. Even so, he took her hand. “Hatake Kakashi.”
