Broken
Whatdaya know, a new story! This is the one alluded to in Touchstone. I hope people like it!
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Pale fingers traced across the rough skin that arced from just underneath Iruka's left armpit to barely above his hipbone. The chuunin muttered in his sleep, twisting himself deeper into Kakashi's arms and subconsciously moving away from probing touch. "Ne, Iruka?"
Another sleepy grumble met his prompting, but Kakashi continued to call his name until the dark, hazy eyes opened, smiled in his direction until Iruka's brain managed to process that the windows were still dark, which could only mean that the jounin had woken him up before he needed to. "What?" Iruka snapped.
"You told me about this injury," The fingers grazed the edge of the scar again, and Iruka flinched slightly.
"You remember that?" Iruka squirmed around, trying to get his scarred side down into the mattress so that Kakashi would stop staring at it. "I thought you didn't remember anything from when you were in that coma."
"It's been coming back in bits and pieces over the past few days."
Iruka yawned, hugely and blatantly in Kakashi's face, "And your point is?"
"Let me…look… Please?" Kakashi pulled Iruka's chin upward when the other man tried to bury his face back in the pillow and return to sleep.
"You've been looking at it since you woke me up five minutes ago and probably before that! So don't let my sleeping disturb your voyeurism!" Iruka was never very polite when woken up, especially since he had a decided lack of sleep over the past few weeks.
"Iruka." He watched the chuunin stop nestling deeper into the blankets, come fully awake, sit up and turn to face him at the tone in his voice. Kakashi brushed his fingers across his closed left eye, "Let me look."
After blinking in confusion several times, Iruka nodded slowly. "You can see chakra with that eye, right? That's why…."
"Yes."
The chuunin sat back, leaning on his elbows, and waited patiently as Kakashi opened his mismatched eye. He watched as Iruka raised his eyes to meet the whirling red of the sharigan and could not hold back a soft smile at the display of strength. No matter what I am, he will not fear me. He met those dark eyes, shifted so that he could see the entirety of Iruka's torso and finally lowered his gaze to the old wound.
The sharigan saw chakra like a brilliant haze punctuated by sharp, bright points that marked the location of chakra nodes. While no clan besides the Hyuuga had the ability to directly attack chakra points, enough chakra was concentrated in the nodes to make them stand out against the rest.
The chakra flowing through the right side of Iruka's body, right up until the very edge of the scar, remained normal. But the left side was another matter. The net of chakra nodes remained dark and empty; the general cloud of chakra that should have filled that area was absent, making Iruka look entirely hollow on that side of his body.
With a sharp intake of breath, Kakashi pressed his fingers against one of the black nodes.
OOOOOOOOOOOO
"Settle down!" The chuunin sensei at the front of the room planted one hand on her hip and pointed her finger at the rambunctious youths that she was very nearly free of. Once they'd finally taken their seats – she'd had to grab a couple of them by the scruff of their necks and tossed them into their places – she gathered her papers off the desk. "All of you have graduated from the Academy and will now be assigned to your genin teams. During this phase of your education, you will be trained to be a leader and shinobi of Konoha." Her eyes softened a little, and she scanned the room, allowing her gaze to settle on each genin in turn. "I expect great things from all of you." One of the kids was staring off at a spot just above the door, and she raised an eyebrow. "First lesson for being a leader! Pay ATTENTION! I'm only going to read your team list once."
Iruka shifted uncomfortably and fiddled with the hitae-ate that he now wore around his forehead. The pressure felt overly strange and continued to bother him despite his best attempts. And the other students kept glancing over at him and whispering to each other behind their hands.
Only two short weeks ago, his normal teacher had suggested that he try to test out of the Academy this year, despite only having completed one of the two required years. The fact that he'd actually passed the test – with flying colors – had surprised all of them, and the Sandaime had decided to let him continue on to join a genin team. Iruka'd spent a good hour chatting animatedly with the photo of his parents the rested on his bedside table; even though he wasn't entirely sure that he would succeed as a genin at this age, he knew, without a doubt, that they would be proud of him for making it this far.
When Iruka'd told Mizuki about his early passing, he'd expected his friend to be happy for him, but the other kid had just scowled at him and asked who he was going to be hanging out with now that he'd skipped a whole year group. Iruka'd stepped away from the silver-haired boy feeling like he'd been slapped, and Mizuki had stalked off. Iruka hadn't seen him since.
"Iruka, Kotetsu, Izumo…You're team 12." The sensei's voice broke through his memory, and the two people sitting next to him leaned forward and just stared at him. Though they might not know his name, he was easy to pick out, since he was the only one they didn't know. The one sitting nearest too him had several patches of tape across his face, and his spiky hair almost completely obscured his smaller friend, who was leaning around his shoulder.
"Ano…Hi." Iruka offered. The spiky one still looked unsure, but his friend smiled brightly at him and gave a half wave.
"I'm Izumo." He'd already revamped his hitae-ate into the skull cap, and Iruka had to wonder if it was a family thing, or if he had always worn something of that sort. "And this is Kotetsu." He pointed at the other kid, and Iruka saw – Kotetsu, was it? – roll his eyes.
OOOOOOOOO
Both Izumo and Kotetsu were perched on the top of one of the logs in the training ground. They were dirty, bloody, and utterly proud of themselves. They already worked well together – they had been friends their whole life, after all – and had passed their jounin sensei's test for entering the team. Izumo leaned forward as Iruka moved to the center of the practice ground to face off against their scarred teacher.
"I wonder what he can do." Izumo whispered. "I mean, they had him skip up to our group, so he must be pretty good."
"Yeah." After sneaking a sidelong glance at Kotetsu, Izumo chuckled. His friend was faking indifference, but he was scooting closer to the edge of the stump to get a better view.
The ping of kunai against each other signaled the start of the match, and for a good ten minutes, Iruka held his own against Ibiki. Izumo tried to pick out anything of note from Iruka's fighting style. The other boy might have moved a little faster than them. He might have thrown his weapons with a little bit more accuracy, but other than that, he seemed like any normal genin.
Iruka planted his foot into the ground after passing Ibiki on one attack and used his moment to swing himself around, preparing for the next attack, but Ibiki vanished, moving faster than their eyes could follow, and reappeared directly behind Iruka, already swinging his bladed weapon for a final attack.
He's going to die.
In the heartbeat before the blade struck, the space around Iruka seemed to distort, as if they were looking at him through a thick haze, and he was gone.
"Nani?" Izumo twisted his head around sharply, just in time to see Iruka reappear, accompanied by the same haze, about 10 feet away from the circle. He held a kunai in his hand that seemed to be constantly shifting with the boundaries of it's shape, and had immediately dropped down into a crouch with his arm cocked back, ready to throw the strange blade in his defense.
"Enough." Ibiki held up his hand. And Iruka froze before slowly shifting back up to a standing position.
Kotetsu pried Izumo's fingers off his arm and surreptitiously rubbed the bruised flesh. "What was that?"
OOOOOOOOOO
Kotetsu leaned over and snagged a piece of sausage out of Izumo's bento as he plopped down beside his old friend and his new teammate. Iruka was chewing in silence, eyes down and focused on the half of his lunch he hadn't finished yet. Ibiki had taken off – apparently to report their success and the permanent forming of team 12 – but had warned them that training would start at 0400 sharp the next morning.
Kotetsu let out an annoyed groan, "Why the heck do we have to start at oh-dark-thirty…."
"Don't worry." Izumo snatched back the remnants of the sausage. "I'll come beat you till you get up."
Iruka swallowed a laugh, met the probing eyes of his teammates, and buried his face back in his lunch, muttering, "Gomen."
"So," Izumo asked around a mouthful of food, "What was that thing that you did?"
The younger boy jabbed at the food in silence, clearly thinking about what he was planning on saying. "It's…ano…it's a bloodline limit. I can't really explain it. I just do it."
"You really don't..." Kotetsu barked out a swear as his hand caught on the thermos when he turned towards Iruka. The bottle tipped forward over the edge of the stump it had been sitting on and started to dump tea towards the ground. Kotetsu grabbed it and fumbled the top back on, still cursing. "Damn, I'll have to go get more. Stupid thermos, shoulda had the top on tightly, and we're a good ten minutes from the village and…"
"Ko." Izumo poked him in the shoulder, but he was still ranting and trying to get the thermos back together. "Ko. Shut up and look."
Iruka had leaned forward slightly, hand extended, and the tea had collected into a shifting sphere in the air above his palm. "Ano," he blushed and scratched at the scar across his nose. "You might want to go get some more anyway. I know it always creeped Mizuki out when I drank anything I'd caught like this."
Both Izumo and Kotetsu stared at him, and he swallowed hard, trying to shake the feeling that these two might have just decided he was certifiably insane, but Izumo suddenly grinned broadly, "Pour it back in; it beats the heck out of the 5 second rule!
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Ever notice how Iruka made genin at 11 (a year younger than most others), but made chuunin at 16? This is a story to explain that, along with other things that make Iruka, Iruka.
Please let me know if it's interesting so far!!