Fascination II / [Oriko's History] / Part I
Dear god...Oriko thought as she leapt up onto the nearby rooftop, her debrief with Tsunade had taken forever - it had gone midnight when she'd return through the gates of Konoha, so it must have been past two now she was allowed to go and get some sleep. Tsunade seemed to keep on asking her questions about her memory and what she thought about being back there. Her mission had taken her back down towards the southern coast of Fire - apparently where Tsunade herself had found Oriko on her return from a medical conference; whilst Oriko felt the area was vaguely familiar, she assumed this was because someone had found her there and where she'd regained consciousness...not because of some mysterious, other-worldly happenings that transported her there.
She finally landed on her own roof and sighed in light relief, hopping down onto the wide bedroom window-sil she picked the lock and slipped inside. Whilst Oriko's memory was normally up to scratch, she hadn't remembered this time about the numerous pages and documents that she left lying on her desk. So within the same split second, her foot skidded out from underneath her and she landed with a loud thump in a heap on the floor...in what was possibly her least graceful landing possible for an experienced Chuunin.
"I know you like to be flashy, Oriko, but it's a little early in the morning, isn't it?" The sound of Kakashi's groggy voice forced her eyes to snap open,
"Wh...how did you get in here?"
"The same way you did," He stifled a yawn as he sat up allowed Oriko to see he'd apparently made himself quite at home in her bed whilst she was away;
"You mean to say that the great Copy Ninja fell into his girlfriend's apartment?" She raised an amused eyebrow as she pulled herself to her feet, not bothering to clear up the mess she'd made;
"Well, I didn't fall, though I did climb in through the window...your security leaves a lot to be desired, you know," He grinned, as she stepped closer to sit on the edge of the bed;
"Hey, I just proved that it works well enough, right? If I can scupper myself then someone else is gonna be fooled too," She nodded definitively - as though that completely proved her point. (Kakashi held his tongue - feeling it was safer not to mention that Oriko was the one who most often fell for her own 'off-duty' traps as she cheerfully referred to her home security methods.) Said kuniochi yawned widely before standing to undress herself,
"I'm too tired to go and wash properly right now, sorry, but it's going to have to wait until the morning,"
"It's fine," Kakashi replied, stretching his arms over his head as he laid back down, leaving the duvet to slip down to his waist revealing the naked top-half of his body. "Just please make sure you don't have any more spiders in your hair...I really don't want to wake up again to find a tarantula staring at me again,"
"Ugh! I know how freaky was that?" She shivered violently before running her hands through her short afro of hair and vigorously fluffling the hair- whilst successful at dislodging the various little bits of twigs and leaves, nothing more scary fell out. Her hair, much like the woman herself, seemed to drawn to all things natural and collected little bits of nature (bugs, leaves and even spiders) whenever she travelled through the forests of Fire. "I can't believe the damn thing survived all that time, in my hair...and I never noticed!" She shivered again in disgust before slipping into bed beside her lover; he wrapped an arm around her though paused for a moment.
Kakashi hovered for a moment, knowing his girlfriend a little too well, watching as she laid down and covered herself with the duvet, closing her eyes and shuffling a little. He made a mental countdown, five...four...three...tw-
"Fine, sorry but I just have to brush my teeth at least...I'll be back in a minute," She flipped up the covers and disappeared to the bathroom, ignoring Kakashi's breath of laughter at the few, but some might think unnecessarily rigid rules Oriko placed on herself.
"Oriko! Kakashi! It's been a while, Kami-sama you must have been away for months on your missions," Kiyoshi exclaimed as he saw them entering his small, revamped tea house, the business he'd created after his father had died and had decided to sell the small shop in favour of one better situated in the centre of Konoha.
"Kiyoshi!" Oriko grinned as they hugged, "Sorry it's been so long, we've had a lot of missions recently,"
"It's okay, as long as you haven't forgotten me!"
"Haha, nah!"
"What can I get you guys?"
"Ooh! A meat bun, two sides of egg-rice and, uh...jasmine tea, please,"
"Kakashi?"
"Just some green tea, miso soup and an onigiri, thanks, Kiyoshi,"
"Coming right up, sit wherever you like... you're lucky, just missed the morning rush," He grinned - his business has really taken off since his re-location and the addition of serving meals, which Oriko had been really happy about. His business had so nearly failed with the increasing development of the central trading district of Konoha and few and few people knew or could be bothered to look through the side streets where Kiyoshi's father had originally founded his tea-house.
The two nin took a small table and kneeled down on the soft zabutons;
"So how come you were so late back last night? Did you run into trouble on the way home?" Kakashi asked,
"Not really...my mission was down more towards Southern Fire where Tsunade said she 'found' me," Oriko frowned a little as she thought more over what had happened in that area, "I did recognise the area but I figured it was more becase of the fact I'd woken up there, but..." She trailed off slightly as a waitress appeared with their tea, they paused conversation and accepted the tea with thanks;
"You really don't remember anything about that time? Even when Tsunade asked me to train you she told me nothing about you or what happened only that you were a stanger and understood very little of our world. I didn't really understand, but I wasn't really in a position to ask questions...do you remember anything of your life before coming here? Before becoming a ninja?"
"I...have familiar feelings, but it always felt more like some kind of deja vu...some vague sense of that other place, that it was so different from being here, I tried not to think about it too much, I was just so grateful to be here, to have a fresh start and the option to be something so much more than what I was." Kakashi nodded, though it didn't really satisfy his questions, "Its been a bit like, the longer I've spent being here and immersed myself in the world, the more my memories of before have faded,"
"It still seems pretty incredible...I mean, I always thought that there must have been some sort of incident, some chakra or something that must have happened that would have alerted us to whatever it was that bought you here,"
"Hmm," The lapsed into a comfortable silence, sipping their tea, "Maybe this sounds really stupid, but I almost don't want to know, like it might undo all that I've achieved here and if I somehow 'go back', I'll have lost so much more from here than I had to lose before," She looked at Kakashi, with a slightly hedged expression on her face, not sure if Kakashi would understand what she meant,
"I know...I certainly wouldn't be happy if you suddenly disappeared," It earned a smile back onto her face as their orders arrived and they busied themselves with breakfast.
"Did Tsunade say anything to you about this? Or did she simply ask questions?"
"She only asked questions about my memories and feelings of the area and if I felt anything 'off' about it, but she didn't say anything that made sense...she only mentioned that she was at a medical conference," Oriko sighed as she took a bite of the meat bun, chewing it thoughtfully, but before Kakashi could respond, Kiyoshi walked over to join them.
"Hey, I have a few minutes and I wanted to catch up; how are you doing?" He looked between the both of them, sitting at the head of the table; Kakashi waited for Oriko to respond first, unsure if she wanted to involve the man with their earlier conversation.
"Not too badly, to be honest, i'm grateful for a little time off, though...I'd like to be able to spend more than two consecutive days in the village,"
"Yea, I don't think I've even set eyes on you in the past two months; have you had some interesting missions or have they mostly been of the standard sort?"
"Pretty standard for me...just to-ing and fro-ing with documents and a few escort missions for civilians," She grumbled slightly, preferring her missions to be of the seat-of-her-pants sort,
"Haha, you're too much like Shiori, she's been grumbling about the volume of low calibre missions too...she said she'd been out with your Kakashi, a few weeks ago,"
"Right...we had to escort the daimyo to a meeting with the lords...surprisingly, though, no one seemed interested...even your garden-variety highwaymen couldn't seem to be bothered," He resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he spoke, but Kiyoshi and Oriko suitably laughed enough.
"Oh, how is Shiori? You guys still happy?"
"She's well, and we're still going strong...we don't have too much time to spend together, with our respective jobs, but it's not too bad...I guess we still just need time to adjust to the sudden influx of work, compared to how it was six months ago,"
"Hmm," Oriko vaguely agreed, she and Kakashi had only just about gotten together six months previously, and everything seemed to suddenly have rushed up on them...Oriko occasionally vaguely wondered if it was Tsunade disapproving of their relationship, but nothing had been said and their naturally discreet natures meant that it was still pretty much under the table.
They continued to chat for a little while but it soon began to get busy and Kiyoshi was pulled away, so Kakashi and Oriko decided to leave. They had the rest of the day to themselves and, since Oriko had acquired a lot of the Copy Nin's habits, they decided to find a quiet area of the training ground to relax together and read.
Kakashi's practiced eye easily found a large and well shaded tree with which to plonk himself under as Oriko laid herself adjacent to him, easily resting her head on his thigh. It took all of one page's reading before the kuniochi was asleep and Kakashi's mind wandered back to their earlier conversation; Tsunade had only mentioned in passing about the fact she was a stranger, but on some instinctive level he figured the uses of 'worlds' had been used as a slightly over-dramatic fashion for simply wherever her original home was, it was very far removed for all things ninja.
But he had always wondered about her exceptional chakra and her mastery over it, he'd wondered, often, that if she had been a ninja and had succumbed to some injury that had her mentally forget about her past, but her muscle-memory couldn't be so easily erased. Whilst he hadn't seen her medical report that Tsunade made about finding her, he had felt sure that her injuries hadn't been too severe - firstly, the hospital staff were ridiculous gossips and something would have reached his ears about such an injured stranger in Konoha. She had been at full fitness, too, when they'd trained, Tsunade (aside from having been exceptionally unlikely to bother healing the bruises that might have covered Oriko, especially as being such an unknown quantity) would have at least told him about her weakened physical condition. This left two options in Kakashi's mind:
1 - Either there was some highly exceptional circumstances in which Oriko's origins were of...frankly paranormal calibre, or,
2 - Tsunade knew a lot more than she let on.
The latter of the two was much more of a cause for concern. If Oriko was really a ninja that had somehow lost her memory, then how did that explain Tsunade's desire to have her trained? How would Tsunade have known? Oriko had not been in any bingo books and Kakashi himself had never before set eyes on her...whilst he didn't know every ninja personally, he would bet good money, that there were very few ninjas (higher than greenhorn-Genin variety) out there that he hadn't heard of, seen a picture of or seen their names in one list or another.
But Oriko was a wild-card in every sense of the phrase; he didn't doubt that Oriko was truthful in her lack of recollection, but he didn't think she was really trying hard enough to answer what he wanted to know. The main problem, of course, would be Tsunade...whatever it was that she knew, he guessed that the Godaime would not relinquish it easily, and certainly not to satisfy a curious boyfriend's ponderings.
He'd have to think carefully about how to butter Tsunade up to get what he wanted...
..
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A/n - Yes! Oriko and Kakashi are back! This will take place on a timeline aside from Fascination: Sequel, you can look at this as though it takes place between Fascination and Fascination: Sequel, but for what I've planned, I kinda doubt that they'll correlate well enough lol but any whoo - for those of you who wanted me to explore Oriko's past, this is for you! ^_^
Hope you enjoy! :D
If you've just stumbled across this story, here's the part you need to read 'Fascination' first - just take a look at my profile! :)