Tiny Feet, Combat Boots
Date Posted: 11/16/15
Word Count: 1458
Iruka Umino's only hope was that this client would be much more agreeable than the last one.
Itachi Uchiha hailed from the very same ANBU team, but he was new and he was young and, of course, an Uchiha. Which Iruka wasn't sure whether or not to be happy about. As a member of such an elite clan, it was likely the boy would have a better grasp of propriety than the Lizard of Team Ro, a certain Hokamaru Hyuga (which was actually quite ironic).
Or, it could just mean that Itachi would be a snobbish, self-absorbed prick. Or worse, some kind of sociopath…
The fact of the matter was that there were too many ways this introductory session could go, and Iruka was beginning to wonder why he'd decided to take a year interning as a psych examiner at all.
Too many variables, too much confrontation, and worst of all, dealing with all the darkness these ANBU operatives brought with them. They always had an ominous sense of foreboding hovering around them like a cloud, and with those masks, you could never tell whether or not they were staring at you.
And their unpredictable mental state…
Yes, he was very much beginning to regret this now.
The clock struck two o' clock. On the second chime, somebody knocked on the office door.
His eyebrows rose. Could that be Itachi? So prompt! That was, of course, if it was him. The fifteen-year-old chunin stood from his comfortable desk chair and scuttled over to the door, taking the cold knob in his grip and turning. After but a moments hesitation, he swung it open.
A young boy stood on the other side. Very young. The file had said the Uchiha ANBU was eleven, and so Iruka shouldn't have been surprised, but he couldn't help it. The boy looked so small in a uniform fashioned for much larger, greater shinobi.
Coal-black eyes, soft and gentle and inquisitive as a cat's, stared up at him from under neatly parted ebony bangs. The rest of his long hair was tied back in a thick ponytail, and rather than the skin-tight, sleeveless underarmor that most ANBU wore, this child donned the Uchiha's traditional high-collared, short sleeved shirt. Were he not wearing his grey flak jacket, Iruka would likely have seen an Uchiha crest at the center of the back.
Wait… this is the boy I saw with Sasuke outside the Academy this morning. That's right, Sasuke's older brother!
"Hello," said the boy, civilly enough. "Uh… Iruka-san?"
"Oh, yes, that's me. Hello! Uh, please, come in." Iruka opened the door wider and stepped aside to allow the boy entrance. "You're Itachi Uchiha, right?"
"That's right." Itachi stepped into the meager work space, and looked around. His eyes, despite their youth, seemed to hold a heightened awareness for his surroundings, and a mature calculating glint as well. If Iruka didn't know his age and was watching from a distance, he might mistake him for an older teen, perhaps older than Iruka himself.
Such an odd feeling, the sense that somebody acts and feels older than oneself despite one's obvious seniority.
"It smells like cloves in here…" Itachi noted in the midst of his observation. It was not an expression of distaste, or of delight. Only a simple statement.
Iruka gave paused, and took a moment to sniff for himself. He hadn't been in this office long, but he also adjusted to changes in setting rather quickly. He certainly hadn't noticed any cloves.
Leaving that puzzle to simmer, Iruka drew himself straighter and gestured to his work station, more speficially, the overstuffed clients' chairs sitting opposite his desk.
"Have a seat," Iruka offered, trying to remain accommodating and not let his previous apprehension show through. Thus far, Itachi didn't seem terribly intimidating. Perhaps it was his height…
Itachi did as he was told and sat down with a certain amount of noble grace. The chair, however, had different ideas, and seemed to swallow the boy up. He fidgeted a little in an attempt to find a comfortable spot. A blush flashed over his face when it seemed his efforts were in vain.
Iruka offered him a sympathetic look. "Sorry about those; I don't care for them either…"
The young Uchiha managed to find a decent position and stilled there, waiting a moment or two of silence before raising his eyes to Iruka again. The balance of maturity and innocence in those eyes yet again caught the chunin off guard.
Then Iruka recalled that it was his job to start the session off.
"Oh, uh… Well, I guess… first things first?" He sat back down at his own chair behind his desk, and fished about the stacks of paperwork for his clipboard and analysis documents. Now, I set them around here somewhere… Aha! There. He set it squarely in front of him and dragged a pen close.
Itachi nodded, and settled in to listen. He seemed to have decent manners - that was a good sign.
Iruka relocated the boy's file and thumbed through it yet again, refreshing himself to details. "So I see your first ANBU mission was yesterday… Congrats. How did that go?"
"It went well," said Itachi, young voice even and professional. "There were complications later during the execution, but we expected it and initiated a counterattack before anyone could get hurt."
Iruka frowned a little. The child's developed vocabulary and amicable disposition was all well and good, but that wasn't exactly the answer he'd wanted. He'd hoped for something a bit more insightful about the boy's state of mind. Maybe it was his wording… He needed to be specific.
"Well, that's good… but what about you? How did you feel about it?"
Itachi blinked at him, genuine confusion on his dark Uchiha features. "About… what?"
"Um… for starters, how about your team captain? He accompanied you on the mission, right? What do you think of him? Are you getting along?"
Itachi pondered this a moment before answering with a thoughtful glance upward. "Kakashi-taichou is an interesting person… He's a good leader, from what I've observed so far. I think he cares about the team, and he does a good job keeping things organized and professional."
Iruka made a note on his page. 'High respect for authority! Surpassing initial expectations.' "Good. How about you? How do you feel about him personally?"
Again, the Uchiha took a moment to come up with an answer. Iruka used that time to write another small note.
'Introspective. Thinks before speaking.'
"He's somebody I can willingly follow," the child said at length. The air of the comment made Iruka take pause and marvel, pen frozen above the paper's surface.
This eleven-year-old spoke like an adult. It was mind-boggling. He must have had such a sense of honor, respect, and a deep intuition of thing unspoken, to wield a phrase like that.
He couldn't help but smile. "Very good." A few more scribbles of notes. "How about the mission itself? Did you find it difficult or more strenuous than you expected? How did it impact you?"
"The mission was quite easy. Easier than I thought it would be, actually."
Now, this answer brought a shadow of disturbance to the forefront of Iruka's mind. He paused, and glanced up at the boy, who still looked as young and unperturbed as when he walked in.
But Iruka had read up on the mission. As a simple chunin, he wasn't allowed any specifics, but he knew enough. People had died, and Itachi along with Kakashi Hatake were the harbingers. Had Itachi even experienced that kind of intense combat before?
"I see…" Iruka played with his pen absently. "Pardon me for being blunt, but… the enemy shinobi. How many of them did you kill?"
Finally, Itachi's eyes cast downward, and he hesitated in answering. "Well… three. Kakashi-taichou took out two of them… until Gai-taichou distracted him. Then I dispatched those that the latter left alive."
"How many?"
"…Four."
Iruka's heart sank. That made Itachi's hit count a total of seven on his first mission. And knowing ANBU, that meant up close and personal killings.
Yet he was so casual… or was he?
"What was going through your mind?" Iruka asked, without really meaning to. Despite it being part of his current job, he found he genuinely wanted to know the answer.
Itachi took even longer to answer that. When he finally did, he looked Iruka in the eye and spoke with such conviction that Iruka found his tongue once again coated lead, momentarily dumbstruck.
"I don't like hurting people… but if it's for the safety of my village, I'll do anything necessary."
A/N: I feel like I'm not writing folks like Ibiki and Iruka very well... But. What can you do. I just have to take it one chapter at a time and get better as I go.
