Catch me if you can! Pursuit, Take-Down, Capture ~~ The Shinobi Courtship Ritual
I: Pursuit
For a little while, Kakashi simply thought he was finally going insane. He started losing things. Then, as though his possessions had a mind – or a secret life – of their own, they would re-appear exactly where he remembered having left them. Or, less commonly, they would show up some place completely nonsensical: books stacked in the bathtub, a toothbrush displayed proudly in the empty freezer, boxes of crackers lined up neatly outside the window, light bulbs unscrewed from lamps and piled under his pillows. He felt, when he searched his missing belongings, like this was some incomprehensible joke and he was the punch line. It made him self-conscious in his own living space. He began to entertain the idea that some impish, whimsical force had - for whatever reason - taken an interest in him and this was its way of saying 'let's play.' There were times he could feel its pressure as strongly as the presence of another person in the room.
The most logical explanation was that there had been another person in the room. Though he could not for the life of him figure out who it might be, it didn't take long for him to start looking forward to his phantom's tricks. There was a subtle humor to them that he found not only amusing but somehow comforting. They made him smile. What's more they said, 'you are not alone.' Then, as suddenly as they had started they stopped. Kakashi found he was losing sleep, waking at the slightest sound to peek out the window for some clue of the trickster's return. He admonished himself for being so childish. Really, he might as well have been mourning the loss of an imaginary friend.
Yet, just as he started again to sleep soundly, the pranks re-surged with a vengeance. They escalated from a simple declaration of interest to a devilishly mischievous sort of game. Kakashi couldn't help but think, in a bizarre way, someone was flirting with him. In the very least, he was acutely aware that he was being teased. The mysterious prankster had the gall to make an ass of him. Tiny holes were punched in the lip of his canteen so that he dribbled all over himself when he went to drink. In the dead of night, exploding tags went bad without warning and filled the dormitory with a thick, purple smoke that stank of rotten eggs and spoiled vegetables. Soap flakes were laced in his lunch. If he didn't have such a good sense of smell he was sure he would have been sent running for the nearest bush or bathroom, stomach cramping and ass cheeks clenched.
Again his mind turned to the question: Who would even want to get his attention like this? He was stumped. It couldn't be Naruto. For that boy it wasn't about the joke; it was about having people look at him. For him to consider a prank worth his time there had to be at least - at least - three people either inconvenienced or serving as witnesses. Asking him about it proved for the most part to be a waste. All it did was double his student over with laughter. He wiped tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes and gasped, "Soap flakes are classic, Sensei. This guy's got style." Kakashi hadn't been aware that pranks could be classic. But, if they had style that confirmed that Gai-sensei should remain off the list of suspects.
He thought briefly it could have been Tenzō. Outside of missions his serious kōhai had a playful streak a mile wide. So, he cornered his junior chanting, "Confess, you. Confess, confess!" In response the ANBU threw up his hands defensively, "You finally figured out who gave you that expired ration pack, Sempai? How can you even care anymore? I don't even remember what year that happened in." He barley dodged Kakashi's 'here's-what-you-get-for-being-useless' smack upside the head.
Meanwhile, the pranks grew more and more ostentatious. He returned home one night after five days out of town to find his entire room – every surface: the quilt, the windows, the floor – shingled in post-it notes. He was convinced this act said,'I'm growing impatient.' And it gave him a clue. To get that many post-its, whoever was doing this had to have access to one of the office supply closets. It wasn't much to go on but he was convinced that his tormentor either worked in the academy or at the missions desk.
The following week, he started receiving postcards – postcards from across the globe – by the hundreds. The postman stuffed his mailbox full before giving up and piling the remainder of them, in rubber-banded stacks, in front of his door. "Find me," they screamed. Kakashi sat at a desk still half covered in post-its and examined every one. He found not a single hint beyond the notion that the prankster had to be someone who worked in dispatch. It was the only way he could come up with that someone could have so many willing contacts across so many different countries.
Then, next morning while escorting his genin team, Kakashi opened Icha-Icha Paradise and discovered – to his complete and utter astonishment – that the pages were blank. Upon close examination he saw that someone had taken a razor blade to his beloved volume then painstakingly glued in the body of a writing journal. An index card peeked out from between the pages like a bookmark. He drew it out to find, smiling and waving cheerfully up at him, a magic-marker drawing of a dolphin.
The realization hit him like a blow. He was being pursued by the desk jockey and chuunin-sensei Umino Iruka. He flipped the card over. On the back, in neat, delicate letters were spelled the words: Catch me if you can.
He snapped his book shut. The hunt was on.