Chapter Three: Flashback
"Who's her?" Kakashi asked upon hearing Ashi's tone. This abominable violation of grammatical ethics caused Saki to recover first.
"Who is she." he corrected in his soft voice, "And to answer your question, it would appear that the last of our roommates has returned."
"Chi?"
Saki nodded solemnly.
Seeming to remember that four days ago he had been wishing for the roommate in question to come back, Kawe brought himself to his senses.
Kakashi could feel another chakra presence now approaching from the direction of the Team Ichi compound and getting closer by the second.
It wasn't long before the ninja herself appeared, with five men waiting for her expectantly in the middle of the training field.
The first thing Kakashi noticed about her was that he was no longer the only one to be easily identified by hair. Chi sported a head of bright orange, and the great mass stopped at her waist – he could only wonder how it didn't get in the way when she was fighting, or how she kept it from getting caught in little twigs when she was travelling by tree branch.
Her second most notable trait was her height of six foot-ish, which seemed only to become more prominent as she neared the field, walking with a brusque stride.
Chi approached Kakashi first, and he began to feel quite self-conscious about his meager five foot eight (which everyone said would turn into a six one, but that remained to be seen) in comparison – he wasn't used to women being taller than he was.
"Are you the one who's moved in?" she looked him over once, though her expression gave away nothing.
Kakashi nodded once. "And you must be Chi."
"And you are?"
"His name is –" Ashi began, only to be cut off.
"I didn't ask you, Ashi. I asked him."
"Do you want my real name or my code name?" Kakashi asked, crossing his arms.
"Your code name I should think." Chi answered, "Your real name is no business of mine."
"Then you may call me Ro." Kakashi answered. She nodded.
"And you're good I suppose, since you're an Anbu already."
"I guess so." He said in a guarded tone, wary of the direction in which this was going.
Chi took out a black hairtie from her tool pouch and swept up her great length of hair. She thought for a moment. Then, after only just having met him, "I think I'd like to test you. After all, if we're going to be going on missions together in the future, we ought to know each other's fighting style." She turned to the others, "He is, I assume, acquaintanced with each of your fighting styles?"
"Of course." They all murmured, though Kakashi had sparred only Tatsu. Kawe hesitated for a moment before looking up.
"Ah, Chi, look . . . maybe you shouldn't . . . test the kid right now. He's just been fighting Tatsu and it . . ." He squirmed, "You know, he's tired. Maybe he shouldn't battle you right this moment. And you've only known him for thirty seconds . . . it's . . . well, it's kind of rude to ask to fight someone after you've just met."
"I'm fine." Kakashi insisted as he and Chi squared off, though he had to admit that she had taken him a little by surprise – he usually didn't battle allies that he'd known for less than a minute.
"Nonsense." Chi dismissed Kawe's suggestions with hardly a second thought, "We're shinobi; fighting is part of our lifestyle, it's certainly not rude for ninja to spar with one another as part of an introductory ritual. As for already having fought Tatsu . . . on a real mission, you might not always be as fresh as a daisy, Kawe." She beckoned to Kakashi. "Come, Ro, let us begin."
"Might want to use your Sharingan for this one, kid." Tatsu whispered. Kakashi shook his head.
"That's unfair."
"No, it's unwise." Corrected Chi, who had overheard. "True battles are never fair; use what advantages you have."
Nevertheless, Kakashi refused to use his Sharingan on Chi, who merely raised her eyebrows and attacked.
Kakashi blocked her swinging kick with both arms, but it still forced him back a ways. He held her ankle and Chi twisted in his grip, trying to left-hook him. He barely managed to get his palm up in time to catch her punch. Her right arm was already coming around his left side – the side where he had no peripheral vision because his eye was covered.
The punch caught Kakashi just under the jaw and he swore wholeheartedly, blocking the follow-up knee to his stomach.
"Don't swear." Chi reprimanded with a frown, aiming another kick at his knees, which he jumped over and allowed to pass under him. "It's crude."
Kakashi disengaged and leaped backwards to catch his breath, knowing he couldn't stay on the defensive for the entire battle. Maybe Tatsu was right; maybe he did need his Sharingan, even if it was only so he could see out of his left eye.
Chi rushed at him and Kakashi made his choice, pushing his hitai-ate firmly upwards so it would be level on his forehead. At once he could pick out her tiny, subtle movements, how she was stepping towards the left but also keeping her weight on her left side, meaning that she was planning to fake and go right. She did and he mirrored her, using the opportunity to bring his foot around to kick her unprotected ribs. Seeing that she was moving to block his foot, he switched directions, aiming at her knee instead.
Chi wasn't able to dodge the kick to the inside of her knee and turned her fall into a backwards somersault where she could keep out of Kakashi's range. She never looked him in the eyes but focused on his body, trying to read his movements. Obviously, Chi had experienced the Sharingan before.
They continued to spar, with the others looking on in interested silence. Kakashi and Chi moved with such rhythm and grace that the whole thing looked more like a dance than a fight. Kakashi smiled a little under his mask, thinking of Minato-sensei. He was the one who had put the whole dancing idea into his head in the first place.
...
"Taijutsu," Minato began, "Is like dancing. You must –"
"Dancing?" Obito interrupted. He pulled a face and pointed to Rin. "That's for girls."
"Shut up, idiot." Kakashi glared and crossed his arms, "You interrupted him."
"I'm not an idiot!" Obito snapped, "I'm an Uchiha!"
"You're an idiotic Uchiha. You don't even have your Sharingan. Maybe you're so idiotic that you'll never get your Sharingan." Kakashi taunted, knowing that Minato was going to reprimand him but enjoying it all the same.
"I will get my Sharingan!" Obito shrilled, "And I will become a better ninja than you, Hatake Kakashi! You don't even have a chance at getting the Sharingan."
Obito lay beneath cold stone, and Kakashi didn't let his gaze wander above Obito's chin. Where the blood seeped from the dark hollowness of the eye's rightful place, he dared not look.
"Is it done?" Obito asked, his breath coming short.
" . . . Yes," Rin whispered with a sob. The chakra at her fingertips dissipated as she completed her job: sealing the tissue connecting Kakashi's optic nerve to the foreign eyeball. "It's done."
Obito smiled and closed his eyelid over that dark cavern.
….
"Ro! Ro! Kakashi! Hey, kid! Wake up! Goddammit Chi, what if you've killed him?!"
"I didn't kill him, Ashi." Chi's voice replied with an air of indigence. "He's still breathing, see? And I've told you before not to swear."
Someone was shaking Kakashi violently as he came to, the bright blue of the Konoha sky marred by dark spots and pain stabbing his forehead.
Five faces surrounded him, four looking quite concerned, and the other rather indifferent as bright hair was brushed behind an ear.
"He's perfectly fine." Chi pointed out as Ashi stopped shaking him. Kakashi picked up his hitai-ate from the ground beside him and tried to tye it over his left eye once more, wincing as the metal part came into contact with the tender spot on his forehead. He took it down and held onto it instead, not wanting to aggravate the pain.
"Care to explain why I woke up on the ground with a knot on my head?" Kakashi asked, suspicious that he'd been knocked out by Chi during their match without remembering how.
"Well, you . . ." Kawe began uncertainly, "You just sort of froze in the middle of the fight."
"Like this." Ashi demonstrated, tensing up and staring straight ahead.
Kakashi raised an eyebrow. "I sincerely hope my face did not look like that." He said, referring to the other nin's expression of fear.
"Nah it was more like this." Ashi used a hand as a surrogate mask to cover up the lower half of his face and Chi rolled her eyes before turning back to Kakashi.
"I expected you to dodge, but you really did just freeze for some reason. I guess I knocked you out."
"You guess?" Kakashi snorted as he got to his feet, "I'm going to have a nasty bruise there for at least two weeks. I won't be able to wear my hitai-ate properly."
"That's the least of your worries." Chi pointed out, "What really matters is why you froze in the first place. Did you panic? Did you have a seizure? Is this a condition?"
"It's never happened before." Kakashi replied truthfully.
"Then we need to figure out what caused it." Saki put in, "Lest it happen in the midst of a real battle."
"I'm fine." He established in a tone that was clearly ending the conversation. He headed back towards the dorm without looking back.
There was no way in hell that Kakashi was explaining his . . . episode. Some things are not meant to be shared. He concluded, hunching his shoulders and tracing the Konoha symbol on the hitai-ate in his hand.
A/N: hope you enjoyed this chapter, constructive criticism and feedback is always welcome!