DISCLAIMER: Naruto does not belong to me. (Sniff)
A/N: This one-shot contains some spoilers for my other story, The Ebony Chest. It is like a spin-off section of that story from Kakashi's point of view. Enjoy.
Italics show that it happens in the present.
Silver FeatherHatake Kakashi, Konoha's infamous Copy-nin, stood at the memorial stone. His eyes travelled over the engraved names, faded from time. Rain and wind had eroded the stone until some letters are no longer distinguishable. Yet, Kakashi did not need the stone to remember them. These are the people who taught him, mentored him, scolded him, fought beside him, and moulded him into the person he is now. He knew where their names are by heart, so the stone means little. It is just a key to his locked-up memories, and a place to resurrect them.
A feather from a silver bird floated gently down from the sky. Kakashi looked at it sadly. The symbol of peace and prosperity, traded from countless lives, among them his closest friends. To the village, the names are merely names, no longer living people to be remembered and honoured. Konoha has moved on, remembering few of the fallen shinobi. Not him. Not Kakashi. He closed his eyes as he sank back into the memories…
A six-year Kakashi gazed in shock at his father's body lying motionlessly on the ground. Recently promoted to chunin, he had been excited about telling his father of his achievements on the man's return from an important mission. A dull light shone on him and his father's body. There was nothing but eerie silence.
"Fa…ther?" Kakashi bent down and shook his father's shoulder, ignoring the katana gripped tightly in the man's hand and sticking out of his abdomen, a clear sign of seppuku.
"Father!" He said again, desperation evident in his voice. Realizing that the body was already cold, the boy backed away, trembling.
The man he looked up to, revered, and honoured, was gone. Konoha's White Fang was called a traitor, to be forever forgotten by the village and his name prohibited from being carved on to the stone…
A few weeks later...
"Hi, my name is Namikaze Minato," said the man with a wide grin. "I will be your mentor from now until you become Jounin."
Kakashi looked at the teenager apathetically, taking in his golden hair, his blue eyes twinkling with amusement at having such a young student, and the way he scratched the back of his head, clearly uncomfortable with the look in Kakashi's eyes.
Idiot, he thought. Too cheerful to be a powerful jounin.
"You look too young to be a Jounin," Kakashi said monotonously, stating it as a fact, not a question.
The scratching stopped.
Minato bended down so he was eye-level with his arrogant student. "I am fourteen, thank you very much," he said none-too-joyously. Then an evil glint appeared in his eyes. "Besides, you look too young to be a chunnin."
That shut Kakashi up.
Four years after he started training with Minato...
"You are late," he glared at the black-haired boy, who glared back. Electricity flowed between their eyes until the girl with stripes on her cheeks stepped up and stopped the current.
Minato shook his head at his students.
"We won't be going anywhere with you two like this," he told them seriously.
"But sensei," Kakashi complained, "I don't want to be stuck with two gennin."
Ignoring twin shouts of "hey!" he continued. "Can't we just go back to the way we were before? With you tutoring me without a team?"
"Kakashi, be reasonable," Minato ruffled his student's hair fondly. "This is war. Konoha needs as many shinobi as possible at the front lines, which is why many Academy students graduated early to take over back-up duties in order to free the chunnins."
Seeing his three students listen attentively make him smile.
"Hmph," Kakashi grumbled into silence, ignoring the triumphant look Obito sent him.
"You can't have Konoha's Yellow Flash all to yourself, Kakashi," Obito said, looking pleased at being able to torment the Hatake prodigy.
"…"
Their teacher sighed. "Well, we might as well start."
Rin looked at him curiously. "Start what, sensei?"
Kakashi, on his part, did not like the evil glint in his teacher's eyes. After being taught by him for four years, he knew that that look meant trouble.
Minato laughed at his students' expressions. "Well, you did not expect me to just let you stay on my team without paying a price did you?" he teased. "I am, after all, Konoha's Yellow Flash."
"Cut the self-appreciation and get to the point, sensei," Kakashi said with narrowed eyes.
Rin gasped.
Obito stared at him with something close to admiration.
Minato winced and scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
"Patience," Minato reassured him, "and let me finish." He held up two bells.
"You three are to get these bells from me. Whoever fails will be sent back to the Academy." He looked at Kakashi slyly. "Yes, even you, Kakashi."
Kakashi's right eye twitched. He knew that his sensei was up to no good.
Two years since the bell test, during the mission to bomb a bridge in Iwa...
Desperate, Kakashi clawed at the boulder crushing Obito, his rival, his teammate, his friend.
Obito opened his left eye, revealing the undamaged Sharingan.
"I never…did give you your gift for becoming Jounin, did I?" he gasped out.
"Obito, don't speak, I'll get you out." Even as he said it, Kakashi knew that his efforts are futile. Mentally, he yelled at himself for not listening to Obito sooner.
More Iwa ninja would be coming soon, and there was no way that he could move the rock himself. He placed his ear close to Obito's lips to hear what he said next.
"Take my Sharingan….it is …my final gift to you…congratulations….on becoming jounin." At this his voice faded. "I wanted to stay with you guys longer…but now…so...protect Rin for me….my friend."
Kakashi nodded, and the life from Obito's eyes faded.
A few months after Obito's death...
"Urgh!" Kakashi grunted as he got knocked to the ground for the fourth time. His opponent, a twenty-year old woman, looked at him, clearly not pleased with his efforts.
"Focus, Kakashi," she told him disapprovingly. Her fully-developed Sharingan flashed at him dangerously. "I didn't disobey clan orders to let you zone out on me."
Looking at his sweat-soaked mask, she sighed.
"Let us take a break."
They sat down on the grass, their backs to the memorial stone. Obito's goggles lay before it, rusted and the glass shattered.
Kakashi knew that Mikazuki, his teacher's female teammate, never really forgave him for the death of her dead brother's only son. However, due to Minato's persuasion, she agreed reluctantly to teach Kakashi on the use of the Sharingan despite her clan's forbiddance.
This was three years before her suicide mission in Iwa.
He watched as her eyes darkened to black. No matter how hard he tried, he could not deactivate Obito's Sharingan. Having it on all the time took a lot of energy from him.
Besides that, he was often self-conscious by the way some people in the village looked at him, a non-Uchiha with the Uchiha Sharingan. A different thing could be said about the members of that arrogant clan. Although some were sympathetic, most Uchiha were more than just hostile towards him.
Uchiha Mikazuki chewed thoughtfully on a blade of grass.
"This is quite a problem," she frowned. "The Sharingan is not used to being possessed by a none-clan member. Perhaps that is why you tire so quickly using it."
She threw the grass bit away, and picked another.
"Another reason why your chakra drains so quickly is because you can't deactivate the Sharingan. As long as it is active, the eye takes a life of its own by copying any movements it can detect. It takes a lot of practice to sift through the images and pick out the ones that are the most important."
Kakashi nodded his head, indicating that he was listening.
"Hmm…" she looked at him, head tilted at an angle and eyes narrowed with deep thought. She reached over and pulled down his forehead protector down on one side, covering the Sharingan eye.
"Maybe if it can't see the surrounding movements, it won't use chakra." She looked pleased with the solution to the problem. "However, that also creates a blind spot in your vision, which you would have to overcome on your own."
She stood up and extended a hand to Kakashi. "Shall we continue with practicing using the Sharingan to perceive taijutsu movements?"
Kakashi groaned. Zuki-sensei was even stricter than Minato.
Three years later...during the Kyuubi attack...
"I am sorry, Kakashi," his sensei looked sadly at him, and then at the bundle he was carrying. "I have to do this. There is no other solution."
Kakashi looked at him, eyes reproachful. So his teacher, whom he had come to fear and respect and love like a father, was going to abandon him?
"Anbu!" Minato shouted, making Kakashi wince. Uzumaki Kushina placed a comforting hand on her husband's shoulder.
An Anbu wearing a tiger mask rushed in, bending down on one knee.
"Hokage-sama," the feminine voice acknowledged. Minato took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He pulled out a scroll and handed it to her.
"Take this to Jaraiya-sensei," his voice serious. "This is of uttermost importance, even more so than-" he looked warily out the window. "Kyuubi."
The woman nodded and turned to leave, but was stopped by Minato's voice.
"Zuki-chan, you and Hoshibiki take care of yourselves."
The masked face turned to his direction, nodded, and then Mikazuki rushed away.
Kakashi guessed that his sensei didn't tell his teammates what he was about to do.
"I am going," crystal blue eyes hardened as he looked at Kushina and Kakashi.
Kakashi blinked once to force back the oncoming tears, and his sensei was gone.
A while later...
"Kushina-san," he begged. "You have to reconsider. You must"
Dark-blue eyes glared in his direction. Uzumaki Kushina winced as she got off the bed and rummaged throught the closet for her jounin uniform.
"Minato has always been over-confident," she growled as she adjusted her kunai pouch. "Did he really think that he could get close to that monster with no distraction at all?"
Into her vest went explosive tags.
"But he told you to stay here," Kakashi reminded her.
"And I don't think that he actually expected me to obey that order." Kushina retorted as she buckled her belt.
"But-" he was stopped by Kushina, who pulled down his mask and planted a kiss on his forehead.
"I appreciate your concern, Kakashi-chan." she said, as she tied her red hair into a ponytail. "But people are dying out there. I can't sit here and do nothing, while nurses fuss over me when there are people with more serious injuries."
She turned to the window.
"What about Naruto?" the question made the woman stop short.
Kakashi thought that he had won the argument.
Or not.
Kushina ginned. "If he was anything like what Minato and I had expected him to be, he would be fine."
Lightning flashed, and then she was gone.
"Go find Rin. You made a promise to Obito, have you not?" her remaining voice echoed in the empty room.
Later...
Kakashi ran through the ravaged streets. Fire rained down upon the village, incinerating everything it touches. He slowed down as he reached the innermost layer of defense, where earth-style users set up stone walls around the village.
"Rin!" he yelled. She should be here, helping the wounded. She has to be here.
"Rin!!" he yelled again. He was then stopped by a chunin.
"Are you looking for the girl with the purple stripes on her cheeks?"
The fifteen-year-old Kakashi nodded.
The chunin pointed east. "Go look over there. They have set up an emergency tent for treating the wounded, for most die of blood loss before they could reach the hospital."
The chunin ran back towards the battling ground before Kakashi could thank him.
He ran again, towards the direction the chunin had pointed. His breaths are becoming shorter and shorter, and the smell of smoke and blood irked him.
"Rin!" he yelled as the tent came into sight. He stopped briefly for breath. Seeing a brown-haired teenage girl emerging from the tent, Kakashi yelled the name again.
Rin turned her head, spotted the silver-haired ninja, similed, and waved.
Kakashi smiled with relief. Rin was fine.
For now.
When he returned a while later after watching his sensei perform the forbidden sealing technique, the entire tent was incinerated. It was burned to the ground by the Kyuubi's chakra.
His heart sank. Nobody could have survived that.
A year later, the war with Iwa restarted. That village, taking advantage of the Kyuubi's attack and the death of the Yondaime hokage, struck a mighty blow upon Konoha in revenge for their loss in the Third Ninja War.
The Sandaime posted a request for a information-gathering mission, involving the infiltration of the enemy platoon.
Uchiha Mikazuki signed up.
Kakashi was the one who saw her off. Neither she nor he knew at the time that the mission would turn out to be suicidal.
Another piece of his old life, gone.
Fate is such an interesting concept, Kakashi pondered as he left the memorial stone for the bridge where he is going to meet his students. It gives you great teachers, friends, and comrades, yet it takes everything away after.
Life. What is life? Is it a candle that eventually burns out, or a soul that lives forever?
"YOU'RE LATE!!" yelled Naruto and Sakura in union, pointing fingers at his face.
Kakashi grinned, his eye in an upside-down "U".
"Hehe, sorry guys, I was crossing the road when I saw an old woman who needs help with her groceries, so I-"
"LIAR!!" yelled Naruto and Sakura
"Hn," said Sasuke, looking at him impassively. Typical.
"Like I was saying," Naruto turned his attention back to Sasuke. "I am going to be Hokage! So don't you insult me, you bastard!!"
"Whatever, you are still dead-last," Sasuke retorted back, onyx eyes glittering with amusement.
"Now now, you two," Sakura intercepted. "Please stop-"
"BASTARD! you want a piece of me?" Naruto yelled at Sasuke.
"Why would I? The piece you give me will probably the most idiotic part of you," Sasuke placed his index finger on his temple. "Your brain."
Naruto growled and started to rush at Sasuke, hands balling up into fists. "Why I ought to-"
"SHUT UP!!" Sakura yelled at both of them, stunning them briefly and freezing Naruto in his tracks.
"Sorry, Sakura-chan," Naruto mumbled.
"Hn," mumbled Sasuke.
Kakashi smiled at the antics of his students.
He looked at the stone face of the Yondaime on the Hokage mountain.
Yes, the spirits of the elder generation live on.
Please Review. XD
A/N: I really should be studying for my examines. (Looks around guiltily.) Thanks for reading.