An Honorable Rivalry

"Gah!"

Hatake Kakashi spent an entire minute blinking away tears and trying to ignore the pounding pain in his left eye. His experience of ocular jutsu was that performing them felt like trying to force his eye to focus on a target more and more closely, past the realm of possibility, until every moment was an agony. Even by that standard his efforts to master the mangekyo sharingan were brutal. By the end of some attempts he felt as if he'd spent the last few minutes pounding a nail into his eye socket.

When the pain finally receded to manageable levels he stumbled over to the tree he'd been focusing on. Barely a dot in the bark where he'd made his attempt: by the standards of what his new technique was capable of it was pathetic, but by the standards of his previous efforts it was a major triumph.

"Yippee," he muttered, turning around and sinking to the ground with his back against the tree. With a sigh of relief he shoved his forehead protector back down over his left eye, plunging it into blessed darkness and giving it some rest.

At this rate he'd be able to use the mangekyo sharingan to full effect sometime within the next thousand years. If he was lucky.

"Kakashi-senpai!"

Kakashi lurched to his feet, staring around wildly until he saw the ANBU shinobi standing on a tree branch on the other side of the clearing. The man's mask looked like some sort of otter, nothing he recognized; probably a younger member of the black ops corps. He beckoned the youth down from the tree, and the ninja appeared before him in a flash of motion. "I requested privacy during my training sessions," he said to the young ANBU in tones of stern rebuke.

The ninja didn't move, and there was no way to read expressions under that mask, but Kakashi had a definite sense that a less disciplined person would be shuffling their feet in embarrassment. "I didn't know anything about that, Kakashi-senpai. Hokage-sama requested I send for you."

"Did she?" Kakashi looked up at the sun and repressed a groan. It was near sunset, and he'd been at this all day. A personal summons from Lady Tsunade was not what he needed right now. "Understood. You can go about your duties." As the ninja saluted Kakashi formed the Konoha-Shunshin seal and disappeared in a swirl of leaves.

A short time later he was at the Hokage's door, where after a terse knock he was invited to enter. He came in and fell to one knee before the grand desk. "You sent for me, Hokage-sama?"

Lady Tsunade looked up, a brief frown creasing her unnaturally youthful features. "Ah, Kakashi. I'm glad you came with such haste. I have an urgent mission for you."

. . . . .

"Urgent my foot," Kakashi muttered, kicking at a pile of leaves as he stalked down the main street of the village towards the gates. Going on an informant dead-drop run was considered harsh punishment in the ANBU corps, and was almost never given to any but the most junior members. That he'd been assigned to the task meant he'd either seriously pissed off Lady Tsunade or there was literally no one else to do it.

Either way he had a week of nonstop travel to look forward to, and all the while his mangekyo sharingan was going nowhere. A technique less than a handful of Uchiha shinobi had managed to achieve, and which should have been impossible for him, but he couldn't work on it because he had to tour the entire border of the Land of Fire picking up gossip from penny-ante informants in other lands.

"What a pain," he muttered. There were no handy piles of leaves to kick this time, so he drew a kunai and threw it at a bag blowing down the nearly-deserted street a hundred yards ahead. The kunai skipped, hit the bag, and then bounced it up and buried in a nearby post.

Well, at least something was going right today.

"Ooah, Kakashi, what a fantastic throw!"

Kakashi stiffened, then swore quietly under his breath and turned towards the green-clad streak of motion coming in his direction. A moment later Maito Gai stood before him, legs spread and one hand extended in a thumbs-up.

"Yo, Gai," he said unenthusiastically.

The green-clad shinobi's face twisted with jealousy. "Oi, you always sound so cool when you greet people."

"Whatever." Kakashi turned and started back down the street. "I have something to do, if you-"

In a blur of motion Gai stood in front of him once more, so close their noses were nearly brushing. "No indeed, Kakashi! It's time for another challenge, and it's your turn to choose what it will be while I choose the penalty for losing!" The bushy brows less than six inches from his face lowered as Gai flashed his pearly white teeth. "The loser must hop around the village fifty times using only one foot!"

"Oh?" Kakashi smiled suddenly, a somewhat wicked expression. "All right then. The challenge will be a race."

"Yosh!" Gai shouted, running a rapid circle in victory. "This is a challenge you surely cannot win, my ancient and honorable rival! Name this race."

"The race will be to visit every single informant dead-drop around the borders of the Land of Fire. If there are missives inside the dead-drops you're to pick them up. The first person to visit them all, then return, will be the winner."

"All right!" Gai assumed an exaggerated runner's starting position. "Ready, get set, go!" Within a blur of kicked-up dust the bushy-browed shinobi disappeared down the street.

Kakashi watched him go with a somewhat guilty expression. It almost didn't feel honorable, what he'd just done. Still, he whistled softly as he made his way back to his house and the bed waiting there.

. . . . .

"If I cannot reach Drop Point 6 within the next hour, I'll make #7 in less than two hours!" Gai panted, sprinting with all his strength. An hour and a few minutes later he arrived at the drop point, feeling like he was going to collapse at any moment from sheer exhaustion. No missives at that point, so he immediately moved on. "If I can't reach Drop Point 7 in less than two hours, I'll make #8 in less than three," he gasped, even though the eighth drop point was a day's travel away from this spot.

The forest was a blur around him as he ran, straining the limits of his endurance. He felt bad for Kakashi: though his rival had chosen this challenge he'd most certainly chosen poorly. Kakashi as a ninja was enviable in many ways, but he lacked the extensive physical conditioning that Gai was so proud of in himself. It was simply impossible that his rival would win this challenge.

I will buy him a round of sake when this is over with as consolation, he thought to relieve some of the guilt he felt at having such an unfair advantage. He hadn't even seen Kakashi since the challenge had begun, and it was certain he was far, far ahead.

Ten hours later he collapsed at the eighth drop point. "If I cannot reach Drop Point 9 within the next hour," he gasped out in a strained voice barely above a whisper, "I'll make #10 within the next thirty minutes!"

. . . . .

Kakashi reclined on a tree limb overhanging the main road leading into Konoha. It wasn't the most comfortable position in which to read even a book so engaging as "Senbons and Seduction", but he felt he owed it to Gai to at least be there when the idiot returned from completing his task. It had only been five days, but he had every confidence the overzealous jonin would be back soon. If anything could be said for his would-be rival, it was that he did everything one hundred and ten percent. That such a thing was technically impossible still, somehow, didn't make it out of Gai's reach.

A few hours before sunset he heard a loud panting, and looked up from his romance novel to see Gai crawling into view a long ways down the road. The green-clad shinobi wasn't going quickly, and Kakashi gave his book an anguished glance. He was in a really good part, and it was obvious Gai wouldn't be reaching the tree he was sitting in for another five minutes at best.

Unfortunately reading turned out to be impossible, for long before Gai actually got close enough to be greeted properly Kakashi could hear the jonin muttering "if I can't reach that rock ahead in the next ten seconds, I'll reach that stick in five!" or "if I can't reach that rut in thirty seconds, I'll reach the puddle in seven!" He looked down at his rival with exasperation: he'd seen Lee do incredible things adhering to such a mantra, but he couldn't help but feel that as obviously exhausted as Gai was, saving his breath would be a better idea than giving himself a continuous pep talk.

When Gai finally reach his tree Kakashi cleared his throat, and his rival looked up, mouth open with his constant panting. "Yo," Kakashi said.

The look on the green-clad jonin's face was priceless. Shock, disbelief, envy, and admiration all warred there. "Y-you reached Konoha before me? And as cool and composed as if you've been sitting in that tree all day? How is that possible?"

Kakashi shrugged. "I have been sitting in this tree all day. I never left the village." He sighed at Gai's blank look. "I'd much rather spend a few hours hopping around the village than a week running around the borders of the Land of Fire checking dead-drops. Besides, I managed to get a lot done on my new technique while you were gone. Believe me, you did me a huge favor by winning this challenge."

Gai continued to stare at him blankly. With another sigh Kakashi dropped lightly from the tree, landing on one foot, and started hopping along a course parallel to the wall. "You can drop those missives off at the Hokage's office," he called over his shoulder.

Gai was left sprawled flat in the middle of the road, weeping in envy and rage and pounding the packed dirt with his fist. "Curse that Kakashi," he yelled, "even in defeat he manages to look so cool!"