(Ducks from behind food splattered curtain) Hello, friends! (Screams without dignity and hides behind the curtain as tomatoes of the rotten variety hurl through the air with the same velocity as Jonin-wielded kunai.)
But in all seriousness, I have returned, and with a completed chapter. Huzzah! It only took me a few days of intense focus and Maria Brink screaming at me to shut up about a thousand times. No real excuses for my absence except angry denial about lost chapters (basically the five ending ones…what a drag) and three jobs…well.
(Coughs. Then chugs a gallon of water because screaming is hard work)
Let's get to it, shall we?
Disclaimer: Sasuke looks so much like his mother it's creepy. Mikoto Uchiha is the hardest character for me to watch because of it.
Chapter Three: The Bell Test, Part II
The first time the ground hid Kassien, she'd been four and lost and so very terrified. Konoha was very far away, someone had told her, and that meant home was very far away, and she couldn't find Daddy, where was Daddy? Strange, unfamiliar faces kept pressing close and talking in voices pitched high and sweet because they knew she was alone—that's how grown-ups always talked when she was with Daddy and they didn't know her and thought they could pretend to be little like her, but she knew better because someone tall like Daddy could never be little like her—and they didn't know Daddy, all she wanted was Daddy—and suddenly she wasn't toddling along unfamiliar streets with the unfamiliar faces but sitting next to the caravan, blinking underneath a sun that pressed a hot and heavy hand atop her head as though commanding that she stay there. The fear trembling within her made it easier to obey, and she leant against the sturdy wheel spokes, tired and shaking and not a little bit sad. Earth had dusted her arms and legs, and she plucked at the hem of her shirt to inspect the filth there. She hadn't any idea why she was so messy, but then Daddy's friend was there and smiling and turning to talk over his shoulder: "Shoin, she's right here," and Kassien was smiling too because Daddy was Shoin and everything was right in the world. Years had peeled this memory away until it was nothing but a vague recollection of sitting underneath the unrelenting push of sun with Daddy's shirt tied around her head, hands sticky with a bitter ice snack she always managed to get dirty, until it happened again, not even three years later, and under entirely different circumstances.
Nevertheless, it came to no surprise to Kassien that she could use the earth in this way, though she had yet to determine why this ability was decidedly random, only manifesting at a whim usually discordant from her own. Still, Kassien had never been one to complain, especially to deeds of good fortune. The transition was quick. Soil broke beneath her feet, opening like hands in the anticipation of something precious, sucking greedily at her toes. She fell instantly into its grasp, the forest and black-clad legs of her opponent blurring before she craned her neck for one last look at the sky: blue smearing between reaching fingers of branches that swayed overhead, pitch blotting out the cheerful day until she had the good sense to close her eyes. The temperature had dropped significantly; a chilled damp that rubbed over the sweat that protected her body in a slick film until it dried to a thin paste on her skin. Grit rubbed beneath her eyelids, only a prick of annoyance compare to the tender line searing along her thigh. She forcefully removed the discomfort from her focus. Survival training. The bells. Kassien breathed in, dust a sharp and bitter damp cloying her lungs. She curled around the urge to cough. Focus.
The tingling that once teased at her legs now faintly buzzed beneath her skin. Soil cuddled her every movement, scrubbing fondly at whatever her conservative apparel did not cover as though she was a favored pet. Although disorienting at first, she slowly adjusted to the blindness, the shallow air dusting her lungs, the sudden cold that breathed into her jacket with the purpose of teasing gooseflesh into awareness along covered arms.
Calmer away from the pressure of the sun on her back, Kassien could now recognize the shivering earth around her as vibrations from above ground, trickling through roots stubbornly entangled in the distance, resonating off the smallest of rocks and seeping through skin now entirely saturated in a tingling not unlike when waking from a deep sleep to discover her body had yet to catch up with her mind. Worms wriggled with sluggish purpose along the more fragile roots of grass and the stray weed, stretching tall for the sun as it wavered under the duress of an occasional wind. An animal the size of her fist burrowed restlessly on the other side of the clearing. There was a more concentrated buzzing nearby, and Kassien realized with utmost revulsion that she was unfavorably close to an underground nest of bees.
Momentarily lost in horror, Kassien nearly missed the crumple of grass, the press of a careful, silent stride slipping through the soil not unlike water from cupped hands. If she had any doubts about the power of Kakashi Hatake before, they would have now been completely obliterated by what she could feel standing three feet above her head and slightly to the left. He was difficult to sense—the barest of a flicker, almost lost amongst the shivering grass and the distracting movements of animals nesting alongside her underground. But, if she concentrated on the quiet strain of crushed grass, she had a decent idea of his position. A hand swiped along the grass where she once stood, sending a swoop of vibrations that circled wider and fainter until they too were lost amongst nature.
". . . Ninjutsu it is . . ." Kakashi muttered, the words nearly completely absorbed by the layers of earth above her.
Blinded by the cover of soil, Kassien slowly navigated her way underground, using the barest vibrations of power as a guide. It was difficult work, distracted by the burrowing animals and dancing roots and the preening stalks of green flora as they cycled through rays of sunlight, but she somehow managed, brow furrowed as she concentrated on the task at hand. Earth filtered easily between her fingers, shifting to accommodate her every movement without disturbing the life enriching the soil, brushing along her clothes and snuggling under once clean nailbeds. Kakashi had not moved except to stand. Kassien shuffled through the earth, stopping once she was directly beneath the steady trickle of power—noticeably different from the natural vibrations around her, which circled in almost predictable patterns and dissipated once beyond her reach. Kakashi's chakra, actively concealed, flickered almost too quickly to track, branching off in different directions before flitting away. Untraceable. It was almost bizarre. Even the worms circling thick tree roots left a trail. She wondered if this was true for all humans, or if it was unique only to Kakashi.
Stale air filtered through lungs that quivered with every thud of her heart. She swallowed her nerves. Focused on what she could do. With a steadying breath, Kassien crouched low, gathering power in her thighs. Before Kassien could convince herself of how stupid her plan was, she pushed straight up, power flushing through her system as she extended her arms and legs. Soil rushed around her body, becoming increasingly less rocky as she punched completely through the topsoil, fists opening into a surprising breath of heat before closing around a pair of thin ankles.
"Oh?" Interest saturated that single syllable. He was a little more coherent in her proximity. "A quick study?"
Kassien had wanted to use her connection to the earth to yank him down with her—as he had the Uchiha earlier—but he remained unresponsive to her attempts. The flitting of power beneath his feet never faltered. It was akin to attempting to displace a building. She made a mistake. Her hands clenched tighter around leather and sturdy bone. This wasn't working. A large hand closed around the fabric at the back of her neck and pulled up. Earth crumbled from her shoulders, biting the ground with soft thumps. She blinked stinging grit from her eyes, and a piercing ache stabbed its way through her corneas as she became reacquainted with daylight. Even brighter under direct sun, Kakashi's hair was difficult to look at. She squinted into a single dark eye that glimmered as she hung at his mercy from the scruff of her jacket, legs kicking helplessly at the air. Fabric gathered uncomfortably under her armpits.
Kakashi tilted his head. Though his eye did not close, the delicate skin around it crinkled in the far corner.
"Did you copy me?" he asked. He sounded terribly amused.
The day's heat blanketed her cooled skin. Kassien coughed. A wet clump of dirt plopped onto her tongue, and she swallowed it back.
In battle, Kassien recalled from years ago, first said by a knowledgeable Iruka-sensei in front of a relatively sleepy class, a ninja is either on the offensive or defense. Both can be used to the advantage, given a ninja is patient. While Iruka-sensei in the past detailed the advantages and disadvantages of each position on the field—a little Kassien taking notes with a stiff back and the occasional nod—Kassien realized rather abruptly her Academy teacher did not explain what she needed to do during a stalemate. Kakashi still held her up, and with distant awe Kassien marveled at this subtle display of strength; though he had yet to release her, Kakashi's arm never wavered. Kassien swallowed. The bells glimmered in the corner of her eye, tied to his right hip. What could she possibly do against an opponent like this?
But . . . they weren't in a stalemate, were they? Although the usual dance of assault and deflection had been abated into this stagnation, Kassien had no scruples about her true abilities when compared to that of a Jonin: it didn't matter that they were in a period of what textbooks labeled as Strategic Assessment; as the stronger, more experienced ninja, Kakashi held a significant advantage over her.
So what was he waiting for?
Fear sapped strength from her limbs, each tremor inducing a further weightlessness not entirely linked to her disconnect from the ground. Jacket seams began to pinch under her arms, discouraging circulation. Although sinking back into the ground for an indefinite future was Kassien's preferred plan of action, she knew, even without added emphasis from Kakashi's cheerful eye, that her desires were far from plausible. From what Kassien understood, her options were limited. Kakashi's, however, were not. He could tighten his grasp on the back of her jacket until she either fainted or died by asphyxiation; toss her back into the woods from which she came, where she would slide to an eventual stop, skinned by the friction of rocks and dry soil and a thousand twigs with tips like claws, or crash headfirst into the unyielding armor of the nearest tree; crush her windpipe with his unoccupied hand, which currently rested on his hip above the soundless bells; knock her unconscious with a quick thrust from his palm, snapping her nose into an unnatural curve until she had the lucidity to correct it; place both hands on each side of her neck and give a sharp twist—
Kassien's heart fluttered with the same inconsistency as the wings of an airborne bird, and each breath through her nose thinned with likewise worry. Her thoughts seemed to float in the air beside her, no longer confined by the limitations of her skull but still lacking in freedom, disjointed and meaningless without proper grounding connections to keep them from skidding away. The possibilities of her failure were endless. They scattered her thoughts further, pushed away with each pulse of her heart, weak in her wrist, and blackness fogged the edges of her vision. The probability of her survival was not in her favor. Though it was unlikely he could read her thoughts—an ability only afforded to the Yamanaka—it was more than likely he could read her movements and predict certain outcomes. It was likely he could, if not hear her traitorous heart, hear each breath that stuttered between her lips in lieu of chattering. Ninja do not chatter their teeth. Ninja do not wring their wrists. Ninja do not have obvious tells of their fears or triumphs or of anything else because to have them would mean death. Ninja rule number twenty-five: A ninja must never show their tears. Ninja rule number twenty-six: A ninja must never show weakness. Ninja rule number twenty-seven: A ninja must persevere through such weakness as though he has none—
"Mah, you're a patient one," Kakashi remarked, and Kassien returned abruptly from her thoughts as his mild voice swept through her recitations. His grip at the back of her jacket never faltered, but he did jerk her up and down as though she weighed nothing more than the bells at his hip. The world shook before her. It was so bizarre Kassien's anxiety may as well have jumbled out her ears.
Kakashi tilted his head, and a rounded corner of bright sun rose from the glow of his hair, searing the black fog from her vision. "The boys wasted no time attacking me," he said, and the glee seemed to seep from his eye into his voice: "But you know that already, don't you, Stalker-san?"
Kassien blinked. Her mind cleared completely. Stalker-san? she thought, confused. How do I qualify as a stalker?
"You take all the fun out of instigation, Kassien-kun," Kakashi sighed. He then quieted, syllables bouncing off one another in a petulant mutter: "So un-cute."
He wants me to fight him, Kassien realized suddenly. The man was attempting what Kassien now recognized as 'Mid-Fight Banter': a technique Iruka-sensei defined as both an assault and reconnaissance tactic, in which one has the potential to learn about an opponent's skillset as well as goad him or her into an offensive attack. Kiba had been rather fond of this tactic, Kassien recalled, and used it constantly during Academy spars. It had worked effectively against the demon earlier that morning. But it's also true that this tactic had no affect against certain opponents, such as Shikamaru Nara, who often sighed and looked at the clouds as though responding took more effort than he was willing to extend. Kakashi-sensei attempting the tactic now confused her. Did he want her to practice such tactics? She almost wanted to apologize for not participating, but then she remembered the exercise Kakashi-sensei had set for them this morning. Embarrassment stained the back of her neck and crept along her jaw with a slow burn. She nearly forgot her mission objective, despite her doubts about its legitimacy. Ninja rule number four: A ninja must always put the mission first.
With a mind spurred by urgency (how long has it been since Kakashi-sensei set the alarm?), Kassien categorized her options. Her jacket wasn't baggy enough for her to simply slip out of (she would have to unzip herself from it, which would take much too long as she attempted to guide the metal zipper over dips and ridges with fingers slick with sweat and grit, and even if she managed without Kakashi catching on, there was still a good chance she would trap herself within inverted jacket sleeves). Judging by Kakashi's height she was at least a foot from the ground, so using it to regain her sense of balance remained outside her realm of possibilities. Kassien had strength enough to pull herself onto his arm, but she doubted he would release her no matter how she twisted his wrist. Really, Kassien thought as she brought her arching arms together in front of her stomach, she had only one choice.
A simple hand sign. A pinch within her, like a full body cramp. A brief interim of anticipation and doubt—would it work?—before blue day and green grass and the non-smiling man holding her above ground collapsed upon itself like closing a two-fold card. An instant of nothing; an empty void she slipped through like a crack in the floorboards, a space ignored or forgotten by the experienced in the usual urgency surrounding the necessity for kawarmi. Before she could wonder about it, the world popped open again. The momentary return of three dimensions nearly stunned her, the extent of the clearing stretching languidly below the yawning day enough to onset slight casadastraphobia. (Had the world always been this big?) Something shuddered within her, but the ground reassured her, pressing against her feet. Smoke swirled around her in a dissipating fog, similar to that snaking about Kakashi's outstretched arm, which scrambled to catch the single silver bell she'd managed to Switch herself with. Any doubt gripping her frame whittled to an afterthought as success breathed excitement into her lungs, and she became lightheaded with its presence. She reached out to the red string tied to Kakashi's hip, the bell winking at her just centimeters away. Her middle finger grazed the sturdy fabric at his hip.
Pale fingers snapped out quicker than she could track, cinching tightly around the entirety of her hand and tighter still, shifting metacarpals and phalanges to meet at an aching point, and flung her bodily away. The world stretched into a blur of color. She was stunned by the sheer speed at which she unwillingly travelled until she remembered herself and tucked her knees halfway to her chest, endeavoring to right herself in the air. This foreign velocity made for an awkward air roll, and Kassien's shoulder bit into dry soil, an impact that stung in a line down her side. She skidded across the ground, free arm crooked over her face to avoid the stinging debris of disturbed rocks and uprooted grass that slunk to her sticky skin in strands less irritable than the new scrape open on the back of her hand. Earth's sharp, musky scent gouged her nostrils as she rolled twice, the unexpected inertia hindering her process to stand.
(And briefly, adrenaline crashing through every anxiety dredged up in the duration of this test, she may have understood the Uchiha's smirk at the beginning of it all—so this was the power of a Jonin. So this was a possible future for her, should she survive into her twenties.)
Determination tingled in her fingertips, the resonance a direct match to the ground below her. Rolling onto her stomach, Kassien dug her fingers into the soil with surprising ease, using momentum leftover from her fall to thrust herself underground once more.
Quicker, she told herself, ducking her nose into the collar of her jacket—a temporary filter between her gasping breaths and the earth she now waded through. Her near success thrummed in her veins. I have to be quicker.
Sprinting underground, Kassien found, was not all that much different from walking. Earth pressed around her, rocks occasionally escaping her control to scrape at her jacket, her legs, her bare hands as though threatening to bury her alive. Each breath stuttered in her lungs. She was winded in a way that physical activity had never managed, and her eyes itched in a manner not unlike when she read into the wee hours of the morning, passed her curfew. Kassien ignored her sudden exhaustion, just as she ignored the minor lesions gifted to her from the earth. Focused as she was on Kakashi's strangely sporadic chakra, Kassien hardly noticed the wildlife burrowing around her.
At last, sightless and out of breath, Kassien reached Kakashi's position. She punched up once more, exploding into the day in a shower of dirt, small rocks peppering the grass before melding back to what it once was. She'd misjudged her position—her arm fell short of her first punch, but she adjusted quickly and spun to catch the man in the abdomen with her heel. An arm of steel met her blow, and the staunch rejection of her attempt buzzed from her heel to the base of her spine. With a wrench of her lower abdominals she swung her leg back, both feet firmly on the ground before it swallowed her once more. Even quicker, she told herself, shooting through the earth with a surge of will that burned along secondary pathways. She popped up on Kakashi's other side, each hit deflected seemingly before she even thought to land them. The bells danced tauntingly away from her fingertips as Kakashi retreated a step (and it was a curious thing to note the man hadn't moved before then, able to fend her off without resorting to anything more laborious than a bend at the elbow), and Kassien huffed to regulate her breathing once more. It was a bad habit she created for herself, not breathing during Taijutsu, and often despaired herself for its lack of correction (what a useless ninja she would be, to faint during a battle because she had forgotten to breathe). Kassien settled into her lunge, arms tucked close enough to her body for quick protection. Her toes had just begun the process of becoming one with the earth when a shrill rattle riddled holes through her focus. Kassien blinked, fingers relaxing into a natural curl as she recognized the noise as the clock alarm.
"Noon already?" Kakashi no longer looked her way, head tilted north. The alarm tapered into a silence that rebounded off the surrounding woods, and birdsong reluctantly twittered into existence to cover its shrill absence.
That's it? Kassien's shoulders heaved with every breath. Exertion traced a sickly path down her face, and Kassien siphoned it away with the underside of her sleeve. Mud speckled the fabric in a grainy smear. Adrenaline flaked off her, and what returned was something that gave her a different kind of shake. Spars were common in the Academy, but never had she even thought to try something against as formidable of an opponent as a Jonin, but having done so, it left her with a new sense of appreciation, and a bit of foreboding. Now that she had graduated from the Academy, fighting opponents stronger and more experienced than her would soon become the norm. That is, if she managed to pass this impossible test. And as she straightened from her half crouch, she knew she hadn't.
"Come on," Kakashi said, already halfway across the clearing, hands in his pockets. "I've got an idiot to tie up."
Kassien hesitated for the briefest of moments, and with the briefest caress like a sigh down her leg, the earth's support left her. Her fingers and toes no longer tingled with new possibilities.
Disappointment was lead in her stomach. She had failed the mission. The test. She would not become a Genin this year. And she realized, as she followed Kakashi through a brush nearly taller than she, silver bells but a glimmer between the stalks, that the demon and the Uchiha had failed as well.
Kassien dug her heels into the ground and pushed her back into the rightmost training post, the muscle in her legs pulling impossibly tight. Grass like fine webs weaved between exposed toes. A notch in her spine attempted to whittle away at a kunai groove in the warped wood, and the waterproof material of her jacket slipped with a plastic rustle that occasionally broke into her thoughts, too thin to cushion the discomfort of a curved spine on a hard surface. The pain beneath rust-stained bandages had dulled, but a sting of its potential remained. Beside her Naruto struggled, strangled by an embrace of rope; thicker than Kassien's arm it bound his shoulders to the middle post, winding around his stomach and again at his hips, leaving his legs free to kick restlessly at the air. The Uchiha sat on his other side, ignoring both his teammates in favor of leveling a dark glower at their sensei, who surveyed them with an idle eye. Kakashi's head was tilted down and slightly to the left, and Kassien realized, with an epiphany dulled by the sense of failure, that the man was compensating for his blind spot.
"You guys kind of suck," the man happily informed them. Kassien curled around the truth as it burrowed between the spaces in her ribcage, slipping to pierce vulnerable organs. It was a familiar pain, having her observations confirmed, though she often wished it weren't so.
"You just got lucky!" Naruto insisted. While insults made Kassien more aware of her place in life, they seemed to only piss the demon off. It a most fascinating comparison. "Let me go, you stupid sensei!"
Kakashi hummed deep in his throat. "No, I don't think so."
Strain pulled taut at the defined line of Naruto's collarbone, only visible at the slip of rolled white fabric at his neck. "I'll totally kick your ass! Believe it!"
"I don't believe it," Kakashi said bluntly, hands in his pockets. Naruto choked a little—possibly because the ropes were too tight, but more likely because Kakashi had so staunchly denied Naruto a second chance. The demon squirmed a little against the post, orange sleeves bunching against rope as his arms struggled for purchase, little fingers scabbing at the bark. Before Naruto could edge in another word to defend himself, Kakashi's mild tone swept before them in a breath of carefully controlled patience: "In fact, I don't believe any of you should continue this line of work at all."
Kassien swallowed, the words a poison that clogged her throat and pricked at her eyes. It was one thing to be sent back to the Academy to repeat their final year, but it was another altogether to be told to quit their dreams before they truly had a chance to start realizing them. Shame was a knife in her chest, twisting failure further into her organs until it became too unbearable to ignore, its rot a burn up her esophagus to cover her tongue in a film of nausea she had no choice but to swallow. It faded to settle in her stomach, heavy like true illness. Her father would be so disappointed in her. She'd been training to be a ninja since before she could remember. The ninja rules were her catechism, recited constantly since she found her father's old ninja handbook until effectively stamped to her brain, only to pound through her veins with every beat of her heart. The years of dedication bled through each bruise and scrape earned, remaining as lessons to supplement the rules once callused over and healed. She'd only ever wanted to be a ninja. But the doubt lingered, pressed there ever since she first tried to kawarmi and failed, that maybe she wasn't good enough. And here she was, six years later, with her doubts confirmed. She wasn't good enough. She would never be good enough. Perhaps it was a good thing Kakashi stopped her now before she failed herself on a larger scale, and failed her country as well.
When she'd managed to keep the bile of rejection to a dull simmer of resignation in her stomach, Kassien looked up from her contemplation of her pale toes to see the Uchiha had left his post and now lay sprawled beneath Kakashi's hold, both arms pinned to his back with one hand while a foot pressed the Uchiha's face into the dirt. Kassien blinked, but the image didn't disappear. The boy heaved, chest constricted by an adult's weight, a stuttering anger that huffed loose soil into the air and sent gravel skittering into the grass.
"What was your plan?" Kakashi murmured with idle curiosity. The Uchiha shifted with great difficulty, nose previously buried in the ground now free to huff greedily, saying nothing. Kakashi's head tilted as he considered the boy. "What were you hoping to achieve that you couldn't before?"
Black hair fell into the Uchiha's face, striking his cheek and nose and mouth. It did nothing to lessen the dark intent leaking from his eyes.
Kakashi did not let up. "You failed this test," he said gravely, "because you displayed characteristics undesirable in a ninja of Konoha. Sasuke." His voice grew sterner still. His foot pressed down on the Uchiha's head, and the boy gritted his teeth as his face attempted to become one with the ground. "You believed your teammates a hindrance, and your arrogance has no place on the field for one of your level. Naruto!" (Here, the demon started, blue eyes wide and mouth crooked with the discontent of one expecting a beating, but Kakashi continued relentlessly) "You lacked strategy and patience, and even forgot the mission objective! Kassien—"
A thrill of nerves forced its path to her already uneasy stomach. Kakashi's eye, though hooded, was hard.
"You surprised me," he admitted, "but you severely lack confidence in your execution, and your fear of failure hinders whatever decision-making skills you possess."
The truth this time was a slap to her entire being. It zipped along her skin and teased shame forth from her stomach, spreading its oil along her neck and cheeks, where the knowledge would continue to burn for hours. "I know," she whispered to her hands. She could not look Kakashi Hatake in the eye. She was a disgrace to the ninja way. She was a disgrace to the Otawa name.
"All of these things will get you killed," Kakashi continued, "but none more than the worrying fact that you—all of you—believed you could take a Jonin on your own."
And suddenly, Kassien understood. Despite the shame burning along her skin, despite the erroneous percentages and idle threats and last year's single graduating Genin team, Kassien knew what Kakashi had been trying to tell them all along.
The man shifted his weight to his back leg, still rooted to the ground, and released the iron clamp of his limbs around the Uchiha to stand straight once more. Sunlight carded glowing fingers through silver hair from his left, tainting individual strands until they shone almost white against the day. Hands in his pockets, Kakashi watched the three of them in turn. The Uchiha pushed himself up to his hands and knees, but made no further attempt to return to his post. Instead the boy stared at his hands, dark hair a partial curtain that shadowed his eyes but revealed a pale chin and the tip of his nose. A frown touched at the corners of his mouth. Naruto remained uncharacteristically silent, still for the first time since he'd been tied to the middle post.
"What was the purpose of this test?" Kakashi asked at last.
"To get the bells?" Naruto tried, hope an upward lilt in his words.
"No," Kakashi denied immediately.
"To display our abilities," the Uchiha stated, still on his hands and knees, but clearly listening.
"That's just a bonus."
"Teamwork," Kassien said quietly.
Kakashi smiled by closing his eye. "Yes."
The Uchiha's head snapped up, dark eyes a void that swallowed passion with the same greed as a tunnel did light. Naruto rolled his head to face her, but she didn't return the favor. She merely dug her heels further into the ground. Stupid. The information to draw this conclusion had been in front of her all along. She had just been too stupid, too slow, to see it.
"Had you worked together, it's possible the three of you could have taken the bells," Kakashi admitted.
Naruto squirmed uncomfortably, confusion slanting his open features sideways. "But, Sensei, there were only two bells—"
"Have you not been listening?" Kakashi demanded, annoyed. "This test was never about the bells! You have been set up from the start: the information your Chunin-sensei gave you yesterday, what you learned from me today, the appearance of inequality—everything was designed to pit you all against each other, to create conditions in which one's own interests aren't the issue. Those who could muddle through extraneous information, who could think for themselves and get over their differences to achieve a common goal . . . well, it's really too bad you could not. This was a mission simulation, and you all failed. Missions are completed in teams. While individual skill is important, it's teamwork that makes a ninja village successful. Individual actions that disrupt teamwork throw the team into crisis and lead to death."
Silence seeped between the Genin like daylight into the ground, settling into the soil as seeds to take root. Kakashi's solemn tone had blanketed the previous atmosphere of adrenaline aftershock and disbelief, effortlessly issuing a calm that commanded their immediate obedience, ending their fight and thoughts as a period at the end of a silence. It demanded respect. Thoughtfulness. Her earlier shame had finally simmered into a manageable itch. Kakashi eyed them all individually before turning his back and ambling with slow purpose to the large, kunai-shaped slab of obsidian. Silver etchings of ninjas past shimmered faintly with distance.
"This is the Memorial Stone," Kakashi stated needlessly. His voice was a dull kunai, blunt and lackluster but still retaining the potential to hurt with enough force. The slender reed of his form blocked most of the stone from view, and his head tilted downward, exposing a sliver of pale skin between his flak jacket and the needle bed of hair pinned beneath the knotted strap of his forehead protector. There was a long pause. He could have been paying his respects, but it was equally as likely he was idly pursuing the stone for dramatic effect. At last he said, "The greatest heroes of Konoha are immortalized here."
"Im—immortalized?" Naruto stumbled over the word, craning his neck as though it would allow him a closer look.
"It means their names are on the stone, Idiot," the Uchiha snorted, now leaning against the leftmost post with his shoulder, arms crossed as he regarded their sensei with open contempt.
Excitement pulled Naruto's mouth nearly apart, but Kassien couldn't help but add to the Uchiha's explanation. "It means they're dead, Naruto," she whispered to the demon. "They gave their lives for the village."
Naruto's smile instantly faded into a heady disquiet, eyes flickering away. His body radiated a heavy, instant remorse.
"My best friend is on this stone," Kakashi said. He then glanced over his shoulder, dark eye both assessing and curious. "I'll give you one more chance."
Kakashi has had only two team photos done in his lifetime: the first, when he was five and apprenticed to Minato-sensei; the second, when Obito and Rin graduated from the Academy four years later. Small, Chunin, and three years into a strict disciplinary regimen he'd set for himself, Kakashi had protested that team ad nauseum: he'd recited laws dating back to the Shodaime, protocol he'd dug up from the library and memorized to subsection letters, quotes from the extensive and kindling-dry The History of the Ninja series to illustrate how putting a Chunin apprentice on a permanent Genin squad Was Never Done. Ever. Minato-sensei had only been increasingly amused by Kakashi's efforts to settle his problem diplomatically, to his chagrin; There isn't protocol for a five-year-old Genin, either, Kashi-kun, the man would say. Then pat his head, give him a kunai, and hustle him along. Until then, Kakashi had managed to avoid mind-numbing D-ranks, having been much too young to grocery shop or child mind, but not too young to kill. Though he hadn't realized it then, Minato-sensei had been at that age in which his own mortality was but an abstract concept left to scholars, tackling the impossible with a keen mind and a fierce belief in his abilities. Young and entrenched in the war as he was, Minato-sensei did not see a problem having a toddler tag along to assassinations. His father did not. Nor, certainly, did the council, a group of retirees and civilians that favored things that now crippled Kakashi in remembrance, though there had been one notable occasion in which the Sandomine shouted himself hoarse when Minato-sensei sheepishly reported almost leaving Kakashi behind in Lightning after a risky infiltration as 'father' and 'son.' Genius as the man had been, he tended to lean toward absent-minded when reworking a theory. Minato-sensei had been distracted by storm clouds that day. Three years later, he'd developed a technique that twisted innards and blasted legions of men across the battlefield.
"Why is this necessary?"
That voice was both too young and hard to be Minato-sensei, who spoke his words with a quiet power none dared contradict. Kakashi blinked away the cobwebs of his past. Familiar words once crisp and black now faded with oil and dirt and the less than friendly kiss of sunlight materialized into his current reality, realization a slick tar on his tongue and down his throat. Nostalgia was a rare experience for Kakashi, and not one he particularly enjoyed. By definition, nostalgia afforded the afflicted sentimental feelings for past events, but for Kakashi, whose childhood was defined by grief and horror, he felt that there must be something very wrong for him to yearn for a war-torn Konoha while living almost comfortably in peacetime. Besides, nostalgia prompted social sharing—something he could not do. Everyone he'd either befriended or looked up to were dead.
Shielding the majority of his face with his book, Kakashi glanced down—something Kakashi supposed he'd be doing a lot of, now that he had tag-alongs of his own. Black hair struck hair half-heartedly from the back of the boy's head, suggesting the last Uchiha was as prickly as the porcupine he did his best to resemble, the length in front enough to hide facial features from those exceeding the boy's height. Effective in discouraging rooftop attackers, Kakashi couldn't help but assess, but the red and white fan spanning the back of his navy pullover was enough to render such tactics—accidental or no—obsolete. Family pride, while usually a good indicator of loyalty, would be enough to end the last of a priceless and jealously sought after bloodline before little Sasuke had a chance to even consider what it truly meant to 'restore a clan.'
The thought was enough to make him giggle, but Kakashi remembered himself and swallowed the urge. Icha Icha Paradise whispered beneath his fingertips. He turned a page and pretended to read. They were in Training Ground Fifteen, one of the more structured and aesthetically pleasing training grounds Konoha had to offer. Despite the abundant outcropping of the now rare pillars of Hashirama trees, long stretches of trampled grass lay uprooted before them, bleached by chronic sunlight and brittle with its inadequate ratio of rainfall. Usually dedicated for speed training, given its remarkable acreage of both straight and hilled land, it was traditionally used each year as the backdrop for Genin team pictures. Thankfully, clouds offered a steady reprieve from yesterday's heat, allowing for a pleasant morning. As the photographer fiddled with the dials on his camera, Kakashi kept an idle eye on his tag-alongs. Sensei's son bounced in a way Sensei never would have (so restrained and regal was Minato-sensei, even in his youth), excitement radiating from every orifice in his compact body, in every sure step, every gesticulation of tireless hands, fueled by yesterday's success and a tentative hope for the future guarded carefully in familiar eyes. His mouth glimmered with a rare happiness Kakashi had never seen from him, and it was almost a shock to Kakashi's system, seeing Kushina-nee-san smile so brightly from beyond the grave. The boy gabbed almost nonstop to the quiet little girl with strange brown hair that curled in ringlets about her temples, tamed into a plait for this morning's activities. Such hair could only be hereditary, Kakashi thought, but he'd only seen it twice before: on an escapee he'd been commissioned to return to Ame, and on a red-haired toddler in Kiri. Of all his Genin, hers were the only parents he had yet to meet.
Or, parent, he amended, remembering the scant information from her Academy file. To know the parents of orphans seemed to be a theme of Kakashi's life; it interested him he knew more dead than living.
When it was clear Kakashi wasn't going to respond, a scowl tugged at Sasuke's pale cheeks.
"Kakashi-sensei," the boy said from Kakashi's shoulder, and it probably shouldn't amuse him that giving Kakashi such a respectful title rankled the boy with the same painful insistence as pulling teeth, but it did. "What is the point of this."
At Sasuke's age, Kakashi remembered thinking the entire process to be pointless and a waste of time. Of course, he'd been quite the jaded little shit in his childhood, and often thought anything that wasn't training, studying, or missions to be pointless and a waste of time. There had been a time in his life he'd hated even stopping to eat, and had lived almost entirely on food pills and ration bars.
He understood Sasuke's perspective, but he knew better than to give the jaded little shit validation.
Humming to himself, Kakashi turned another page. "Official documentation, clientele propaganda, sentimental keepsake, because I said so, take your pick," he said. And if Sasuke puffed up like an offended fish, it wasn't any business of Kakashi's; he really couldn't care less if he offended his tag-alongs. He was their boss, not their friend. They needed to understand the chain of command. And though he did his best to keep the boredom from his tone—comradery was difficult to foster in an environment of resentment—he'd never had the patience explaining what could be easily deduced from one's surroundings. Again, he questioned the Sandomine's sanity. Kakashi hadn't worked with children since his own Genin-Chunin team.
And for a good reason, he mused, peering over the top of his beloved book to the little people now under his command. Kassien Otawa. Sasuke Uchiha. Naruto. Three distinct and vastly different personalities and priorities, with hardly anything more in common than the unspoken taboo of dead parents. Although Naruto seemed determined to find something, given his inability to stop talking, despite the delicate peak of Kassien's eyebrows indicating that she felt overwhelmed. The last Uchiha clearly wasn't listening, disinterest a welcome change from the contempt usually spoiling his mother's good looks, as he watched a batch of Chunin run their series of sprints, becoming dark blurs that streaked the vast clearing. To an eye as untrained as a Genin's, they would have appeared as flits in their attention, invisible until they either slowed or stopped. An ache poked through Kakashi's focus, and he quelled the urge to rub the back of his head. This team would either fail miserably, unable to stand one another enough for teamwork, or become a cohesive force unlike anyone had ever seen, inseparable as children with nothing left to lose but each other tend to be. Kakashi foresaw issues with either outcome, but they'd cross that bridge when they got there. Preferably before it crumbled to shapeless rock and dust.
Still, he owed it to them to try. He owed it to Sensei.
"I still have my team photo," Kakashi admitted, not to why he did so. He blamed it on the nostalgia lingering like a rot in his brain. It must have affected his filter.
"Wow," Naruto piped up from somewhere about his other elbow. "I didn't know they had cameras back then, Kakashi-sensei."
Then again, Konoha shinobi knew Kakashi for his short emotional range. Surely, training Genin wasn't much different from ANBU hopefuls. It would be something of a learning experience.
"Hatake-san." The photographer, a retired Chunin of the Third Shinobi War, snapped an external bulb into place atop his camera. He regarded Kakashi with an apathetic stare, single brown eye blank where most would have been at least a little tickled by Naruto's daring, and gestured behind him. "Whenever you are ready."
Kakashi blinked languidly up from his novel, aged pages dry beneath the grasp of slack fingers. Leaves from the twisted bark of the Hashirama trees scattered light in angled fragments about the forest floor, bending around those present and laying square across the photographer's eye. Milky and unresponsive, his eyelid didn't even crease, which gave insight into the man's ninja career, although Kakashi understood it wasn't the blind eye, but psychological complications that kept him away from the field. It was nice to know Kakashi had options for when he finally cracked.
The process for the team photo was as pointless and time-consuming as Kakashi remembered, especially when the boys decided to run a two-man circus routine—something Kakashi was slowly, and regrettably, beginning to understand would be the norm for the upcoming future. He wondered if this was retribution for his own spats with Obito, and felt a deep kinship with his sensei. It had started with a simple question from the photographer about positioning. Naruto had responded at first with a full facial scrunch, tucking his chin into his hand while the other propped up his elbow, then with an epiphany that flipped Naruto's expression like a switch the boy bounced over to the silent little girl and threw his arm around her shoulder. Kassien's eyes widened from their perpetual slant, but Naruto's had closed, beaming at the world with his thumb jutted out before his chest. She had started under his arm and looked his way, then, after the slightest of moments, copied the boy with tentative understanding. Her smile remained uncertain, but when Naruto did nothing to throw her arm off, the other extended and she became genuine. A rare warmth flittered in Kakashi's chest at the image. Despite its horrifying, and hopefully coincidental, mimicry of Gai's patented 'Good Guy Pose,' it was actually kind of . . . cute.
Sasuke, conversely, did not agree. "You look stupid," the jaded little shit remarked, and something uncomfortable creased in Kassien's eyes before she folded all expression away with a great and surprising efficiency Kakashi hadn't seen since Itachi Uchiha.
Naruto's responding scowl ripped his cheer to shreds. "Fuck you, Bastard," he said, displaying his affinity for the blunt and vulgar—something that Kakashi would have worried about had this conversation happened in Hokage Tower, under the express evaluation of his peers and superiors. As it was, the photographer may as well have been carved into the bark of the trees around him, such was his lack of response. He merely waited, camera in hand. Naruto and Sasuke continued their verbal spar about one's intelligence (or lack thereof), and Kassien drifted from Naruto's friendly hold and stepped further into the shadows of Hashirama's creation, eyes darting between the boys. She swallowed a few times, seeming to shrink into her charcoal rain jacket when Naruto's voice reached an unreasonable pitch.
Kakashi may or may not have threatened them with an obscene amount of laps around the village, but eventually the boys calmed enough to stand tersely together, a sulk but a downward tug on Sasuke's features, dark eyes slitted and angled pointedly away from Naruto, whose arms were folded tightly across his chest, bristled from the yellow spikes of his hair to the fingers grasping his forearms. Irritation charged the air about them, and the heady sludge of dislike seemed to roll off their shoulders in palpable waves. Kakashi nudged a reluctant Kassien to stand between them. She fidgeted, twisting the hem of her right sleeve with bony fingers. Though Sasuke appeared not to have noticed her presence, Naruto marginally relaxed, something soft releasing the anger once embedded in unsightly wrinkles on his face.
Relief a soothing balm to his patience, Kakashi tucked his book into his vest and found his place behind his students. He slipped his hands in his pockets. "Alright, kiddos," he said, and nodded toward the retired Chunin. "Look at the camera and pretend we're at least half civilized."
Had Naruto not nodded a dozen times, Kakashi would have believed the boy understood him.
"I can do that, Sensei," Naruto declared. "I'm good at being civilized. I'll be the most civilized ninja the world has ever seen!"
Kakashi didn't sigh, but he wanted to. Something felt very wrong with that sentence. Maybe it was the montage of assassinations imprinted on his Sharingan.
The photographer pressed the camera to his good eye.
"The only thing you're good at," Sasuke said, soft as the leaves rustling above their heads, "is that jutsu that turns you into a little bitch."
Something feral rumbled between Naruto's teeth, and he turned to look over Kassien's head at the other boy. Sasuke tilted his head, satisfaction a dark tint in the curved line of his smirk.
The camera flashed. Kakashi fisted the hair of both boys and forced them to face frontwards, exasperation dwindling into a faint apology as white ebbed from the corners of his vision. Though he and Obito had traded their own share of verbal abuse, he didn't remember ever being so candid with insults. Nor did he swear. At least, he sighed, wishing he could shunshin away with the photographer as Naruto threw himself at Sasuke, he escaped the fate of unnecessary and tiresome drama that accompanied a love triangle.
.
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Kinda not happy with the last section. I redid it a few times and am still not satisfied. I wanted to put his first impressions of the kiddos in there, but I frankly wanted to get this out (because you've all waited long enough, I think), and it's a little hard to think at the moment. Expect this chapter to look a bit different when I post the next one. I'll definitely redo the last section when I'm feeling a little less concussed. (I can't read or run or do anything. Much suckage up in here)
Enjoy your weekend!
