General disclaimers apply (aka Naruto is and will never be my concocted brilliance)
There is blood everywhere.
The beating of his heart is erratically abnormal, deafening the noises from the outside world. His movements play out in jerky, fragmented motion through his eyes as he drops to the ground, scrambling in desperate need for his idiotic partner.
Pieces of green spandex are missing from his body, but the color of flesh isn't what flashes through. Red. He's covered in red. From his weird looking face to his chest and his feet. Covered in that awful coppery smell he's learned to block out of his senses. But for some reason, he can smell it today.
It's all around him. Suffocating him, drowning him because this was not supposed to happen and what in the hell did Gai do to cause him to lay limp and boneless in front of him looking like a single touch from Kakashi will break him into millions of tiny, little pieces? He was never a china doll.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows the answer to this forbidden technique Gai so stupidly decided to use. The knowledge is there, obscured and pushed to the side by the post-adrenaline rush of being alive and staying alive amongst a clearing full of death.
Death that might as well been caused single handed by whatever it was that Gai did.
They had started out being surrounded by fifteen rogue ninja. Fifteen specialized rogue ninja that Kakashi's judgment poorly underestimated because he was ANBU. He could deal with far worse than petty little rogues. But then morning was turning into night and Kakashi's chakra was on the verge of being completely depleted with only having beat four out of the fifteen bastards.
Somewhere along the way his senses caught up with Gai and his progress and a tiny flicker of jealousy sparked in his chest when he noticed that he had taken out six already. But that second of distracted envy was enough to leave him vulnerable and before he knew it, his ears picked up the shrill sound of his name before being pushed back, his head thudding against the hardened soil and a windmill shuriken lodged deadly accurate to the tree behind him at the same height of his neck.
His vision was left hazy and at first he'd thought it the reason as to why Gai's movements were nothing but blurs, but then his surroundings became clearer and Gai was still a blur with bodies dropping left and right with few seconds in between each.
He finished off the remaining five on his own, turned to Kakashi with a blinding smile that was too strained to be genuine, before his knees buckled from under him, sending him face down on the dirt.
Any other time Kakashi would have scoffed, told him better luck next time and walked away. Instead, he remained motionless, watching the barely there rise and fall of Gai's back, the involuntary twitch of muscles and the return of his normal brown skin tone.
Somewhere in the distance he can hear the sounds of birds coming back up now that the fighting has stopped. Life is resuming once again and Kakashi, well, Kakashi is running to save one annoying life he will no longer underestimate.
Besides, they have a challenge as soon as they get back home and he could use to get shit wasted for being saved like a damsel in distress. But he'll let it go.
Just this once.
A/N: this will probably turn into drabbles. Hope you enjoyed it so far. If you can, please tell me what you think.