Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its related content.
A/N: THIS IS A DOUBLE UPDATE. If you only got the notification for one chapter— read this one first. Earlier chapters have also been revised with some superficial changes; feel free to reread those at your discretion, though nothing has changed content-wise.
Chapter 3
Minato — The Apprenticeship (Age 5)
When the Third had approached him with the offer of an apprenticeship (rather, when the Third had ordered him to take on an apprentice), Namikaze Minato had not been sure what to think. He was still a fresh jōnin; he'd been promoted a little over a year ago, and though he'd admittedly been part of the Chūnin Corps since he was eleven, his mission repertoire was not yet on the impressive level anticipated for early graduates such as himself. He had only just met the required number of A-ranks.
He was also only sixteen. Teaching was not something he'd expected to do until he was at least in his twenties, assuming he survived that long. To be perfectly honest, it was not something he felt ready for. But the Hokage had been firm in his assertion that Minato was the only one he trusted to take on this particular student, so he had kept his mouth shut and complied. Though he had admitted to being rather curious as to who it was he was being entrusted with. The Third had just smiled placidly and said:
"He's a rather unique case. There are many people who would exploit his… quirks, and not all of them would do so out of loyalty to me. Were Jiraiya here, I would have asked he take the boy on, but he is not, and so here we are. Perhaps my student would be willing to do so when he returns. I am certain you, at least, will handle him well in the meantime."
It had felt overwhelmingly ominous. There were a lot of people Minato could think of that had "quirks." Every single one of them was terrifying, and not someone he would ever willingly mentor, regardless of the fact that all of them were older than him anyway. Jiraiya-sensei had the habit of peeping in on hot springs and writing sub-par smut stories; he was part of the Sannin and the first person to receive approval from the toads as summoner since the Warring States. Tsunade was apparently something of a gambler, although Minato had only ever heard his sensei say so; she was the greatest medic the Elemental Nations had ever seen. Orochimaru was frightening in an entirely different manner that only served to further prove his point. Captain Hatake was a notoriously aggressive and persistent mother hen, and also held on the same level as the aforementioned Sannin themselves.
Even Minato's girlfriend Kushina — a recent development that still had a goofy smile plastered on his face — had her fair share of tics, verbal one notwithstanding. Quirky, as far as he was concerned, was a sure sign of potential power and future fear-factor. He wasn't sure if he could handle a quirky student. A quirky student whose oddities could be exploited? The simple thought of it made him uneasy. But Minato was nothing if not resilient and determined, and his title of "genius" was not undeserved. He would make it work. Somehow.
Alas, those thoughts did not last any further than the night before team assignments, when Minato finally opened his prospective student's file. All he had to do was read the name "Hatake" before he felt the weight of his task settle onto his shoulders with unrelenting force.
Minato had not been a genin when Hatake Sakumo had started up his infamous babysitting D-rank. He and his team had all become chūnin when Minato was age eleven, only a year after their assignment to Jiraiya-sensei's team. It wasn't until a year after this promotion that the D-rank had gone into circulation. Given that the Second War was also reaching its climax around the time, members of the Chūnin Corps such as himself were running exclusively C- and B-rank missions. He had never been (mis)fortunate enough to babysit the youngest Hatake Clan member. That was not to say that he had not heard about the child, however.
Following the end of Second War, there had been a slew of formal promotions. Field promotions received during the War were finalized in the Chūnin Exams and Jōnin Trials over the course of the next two years. Academy graduation age was reverted to peacetime standard. Fresh genin were encouraged
to take their time more carefully honing their skills outside of wartime, while graduations lulled to a near standstill— and senior genin were shuffled off to the Chūnin Corps, as Minato himself had been. By the time the dreaded Hatake D-rank had been around long enough to make a lasting impression, nearly all of the genin who had been forced to take it were running missions with him in the Corps. And boy, did they like to complain. "At least it's not the Hatake kid," had become a common phrase to hear while running the more grueling B-ranks.
The bulk of Minato's understanding boiled down to this: there was something strange about Hatake Kakashi, something fundamentally unsettling that couldn't be dismissed as the uncanny intelligence of a prodigal shinobi-to-be. What started as the ravings of a civilian babysitter unaccustomed to the wonders of a high-functioning chakra-enhanced brain had, in the time since, ballooned rapidly out into the hysteric, bitter, terrified realization that the ghosts of your past were not so easy to shake off as originally believed. How a child who rarely left the confines of his home was able to learn about them was a mystery nobody in the Corps had yet solved, but that, if anything, only made the situation all the more rattling.
Life as a weapon inevitably yielded a body count. Everyone had blood on their hands. Being reminded of the fact was something few ever wanted.
Beneath his own misgivings, however, Minato couldn't help but feel a touch of curiosity towards his prospective student. It was simply part of his nature. His specialty lay in an art comprised of unravelling and rewrapping mathematical formulas into pretty poems; he was a problem solver first and foremost, someone trained to look underneath the surface and beneath the subsequent layers again. He had never met Hatake Kakashi. This was intentional on the Third's part. He was also the only jōnin ambitious enough to disregard his own uncertainty, possible social ostracization, the conventional standards for "normal", and the looming shadow of mentorship for the sake of duty and intrigue alone. Few others would be willing to give Hatake Kakashi a chance. Fewer would do it with his earnest efficiency.
Minato knew the moment he delved further into Kakashi's file why nobody else would have been suited to such a task. Kushina had always called him a pushover.
Of course, he thought, faint, nobody ever mentioned having to deal with politics.
Standing rigid in an Academy classroom the next day, bags twice as thick as his thumbs smudged beneath his eyes, Minato could not help but feel that he'd perhaps been a bit overzealous in his determination to carry out the new mission assigned to him. For once. He'd gotten only two hours of sleep before he had to report into the Hokage's office and fill out his apprenticeship paperwork— a torture his fellow jōnin didn't have to worry about until they'd actually passed their prospective students. That alone had taken him another three hours, and then he'd barely had time to take Kushina out to lunch before he'd had to report to the Academy for team assignments.
Hatake Kakashi's file was absurdly, incomprehensibly involved for someone who hadn't even made genin. It doubled back on itself. It obscured half of its contents. It made references to things and people Minato had never even heard of, and that was only the bits and pieces he'd been able to actually see. There had been entire pages of vague allusions and blacked out names. He wouldn't be surprised if it were thicker than his own; he had spent the entire night attempting to slog his way through it, and in the end, he still didn't have a full picture. He resisted the urge to rub wearily at his eyes.
Every Konoha shinobi worth their salt knew about the scandal that took place the year before. Half of the Black Ops division cut or reassigned; a somewhat notable lack of people exiting the T&I building; Hatake Sakumo's promotion to Assistant Jōnin Commander; Orochimaru's freshly inked arms; the quiet, understated announcement of council member Shimura's retirement, and his subsequent disappearance from public eye. One would have to be blind, deaf, and willfully ignorant to dismiss the shift in power dynamic. The issue was the absence of details.
There were rumors, of course. Konoha always had rumors. Most claimed Orochimaru to be the instigator. The instigator of what, nobody was sure— though it was assumed Jiraiya and Tsunade's departures had caused a political struggle between himself and Shimura. It was well known that the snake summoner had always been the Third's favorite, after all, and Shimura had been pushy on his own policies of late. Meanwhile, a smaller but more vocal portion insisted that Hatake was the true instigator. The others were the collateral. "It had to be Hatake," they said, "His brat was packed off to the Academy the same year; it can't be a coincidence, can it?" Minato had never cared much for either explanation. More factors were at play than it seemed, he'd thought.
Apparently, he'd been right. He just hadn't thought Hatake Kakashi would actually be one of those factors. Not that he knew much more than he had before laying eyes on the five year-old's file. Minato wondered just what sort of student he'd agreed to teach. He wasn't even accounting for what the Third had told him this morning. A shiver of foreboding trickled down his spine at the thought.
"Hatake Kakashi will be placed under Namikaze Minato for apprenticeship until such a time that he reaches shinobi age of majority or the equivalent rank of special jōnin or higher," came the voice of the Academy teacher, snapping the teenager quickly out of his thoughts.
He steeled himself. The conditions were ones he was already aware of, but the reminder that he was to be responsible for the young Hatake for the foreseeable future only further drove his new role home. It didn't matter that Kakashi was involved in shady business. It didn't matter that the village at large saw him as frightening or strange. It didn't even matter that Minato had, until yesterday, been just as unsure of his own thoughts on the child as everyone else in the village. He had a duty as a shinobi, and now as a jōnin sensei, to do his best to guide a child of Konoha's next generation towards success (and, maybe, hopefully, happiness).
He stepped to the front of the classroom. All eyes fell on him with unerring accuracy. Unbeknownst to him, a single pair had been following his path from the moment he entered the building.
"That would be me," Minato said, a small, nervous smile in place. He was acutely aware of the fact that he was only a handful of years older than the majority of the graduates. "Please follow me, Kakashi-kun."
A child pale and bleak as a specter stood dutifully to trail after him, and Minato felt his resolve waver.
No, he told himself, furious with his own uncertainty. No. He's five years old. You've never met him. Everything you know about him is from rumors and a classified file. He's your responsibility. You won't do this to him. He knew intimately what it was like to grow up isolated. He wouldn't make Kakashi's life any harder than it already was. They'd just cleared the threshold before the genin was turning to him, eyes distant and glinting.
"Minato-sensei," he said, hushed and serious. "Did they tell you? About… me." Minato stilled.
"Yes," he replied, voice even. "The Third told me this morning, and I read the declassified aspects of your file. You don't have to worry, Kakashi-kun. I know about your, ah, gift."
"Then… can I…"
"Say whatever you need to," Minato encouraged.
Kakashi's eyes crinkled above the edge of his mask. A touch sly. "I— the— the Second says to stop ruining his Flying Thunder God. You're a disgrace at seals."
Startled, Minato let out a burble of laughter. Bright and disbelieving. He did not comment on the relief plainly visible in Kakashi's distant gaze. He wondered what sort of reaction that would have garnered from the average citizen. His pulse was undeniably racing, with shock, with fear, but there was— wonder. Eager curiosity. Minato had always been easy, when it came to matters of the heart.
No, he thought, his life won't be made any harder so long as I have something to say about it.
A/N: I'm not completely satisfied with this chapter — I wanted to add in more character interaction — but it was getting way too long. A lot of things go on off-screen in this story. I wanted to make it as confusing for you as it is for the characters. Nobody has the full picture of Kakashi's life except Kakashi himself; Minato is only just beginning to scratch the surface, and the surface doesn't make much sense without more facts. I will touch on those off-screen things mentioned here more in-depth later on, in chapters titled "The White Fang" and "The Tsukikage Clan." Please look forward to them.
For some more notes, please read the next chapter, "The Chūnin Exams", which was also posted today.
