.
take your time (aiming to create)
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Kakashi is very glad that an old man yelling weird statements does not push Naruto's "I'm going to be the future Hokage!"-button. Naruto appears baffled by the business man Gato, or maybe he is noticing Kakashi's clone who is scaling the side of the conglomerate's head quarters. Either way, Kakashi uses the pause to lead the conversation and introduce his genin properly.
"In any event, it's not your private property," Kakashi says, slightly cold and very, very bored, "This is Uzushio territory."
The shipping magnate has the temerity to laugh in their faces. "Oh, Uzushio? Their terrible ninjas are long gone and buried, and their territory is up for anyone with the guts to take them! So I did. It's mine now."
"Ah," Kakashi says mildly. His clone is inside now, and hopefully looking for outside contracts for missing nin, trade agreements with Konoha, and any left over money he can find. "If that was only so easy. You see, Gato, founder of the Gato shipping company— Konoha only let you borrow this piece of land until the heir to the Uzushio empire came of age. We no longer tolerate you on this land — this is your eviction notice."
"Who is this heir of the Uzushio empire? This is the first time I have heard of him." Gato asks suspiciously, and he is in the right, too. There is nobody to enforce Uzushio's treaties, even though technically they are all still valid.
"He's standing in front of you," Kakashi says with conviction. "Meet Uzumaki Naruto, the heir to the Uzushio legacy."
The thing with legacies was that once somebody declared a legitimate claim, it was very hard to deny their right to them without a counterclaim backed by a daimyo or a kage. And having just cheated Konoha out of a huge amount of money, Gato was sure to receive an unfavourable decision from the Hokage and his criminal neglect of his dependents was sure to displease the daimyo. If he even received an audience, and not a counter assassination to set an example for other would-be cheaters.
"Yeah!" Naruto adds with enthusiasm. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto, the heir to Urushio!"
Luckily, nobody pays any attention to the mispronunciation of the name of the city he is heir to, and instead focuses on the appearance: a loudmouthed, blond and blue-eyed, orange-clad pint-sized human being, continuously jumping up and down in place.
"No way," whispers one of the goons. "Boss, this has to be a scam."
They are very distracted.
Kakashi watches out of the corners of his eyes as his clone appeared on the balcony. The clone quickly signs an ANBU mission code — cleared out all valuables, no disturbances detected — and then jumps down to hide in the nearby foliage.
Naruto, who had failed the academy sign language course three times according to his file, fluctuates his chakra in the standard ANBU pattern of acceptance; and for the brief interval of a second, Kakashi cannot stop himself from pausing.
It's barely detectable, not even worth a mention in this kind of company, and without further hitch he takes out a doctored scroll and declares with all the self-importance of a messenger, "The Lord Hokage Sandaime herby revokes the seal of approval from the shipping business 'The Gato shipping company' due to the hiring of missing nin, and withdraws all the support and money from ongoing business contracts…"
And as he drones on, he watches Naruto in his periphery vision. He looks hyper, but not more so than usual. Very composed, considering Kakashi just threw him into the deep end and didn't even tell him how to swim.
Kakashi closes the scroll with, "You have until the end of the month to clear out the premises that belong to Konoha and its affiliates. We expect your immediate cooperation in this matter."
There's silence.
Then, one of the uppity goons asks, "Or what?"
Kakashi projects his killing intent. The other guy, who has just started objecting, "The end of the month is in five…" swallows the rest of the sentence and looks close to pissing himself.
However, what really sells it, is Naruto cheerfully piping up, "I'm going to built a Ramen fair! It's going to be the greatest! There'll be miso rides, and everyone will be able to bathe in delicious noodles!"
It is audacious, and Gato and his companions look gobsmacked, but not disbelieving. With this almost natural talent for deception and subterfuge Kakashi is going to have to rethink his plans to make his team into frontline fighters. Sasuke with his Sharingan, Sakura with her pink hair, and Naruto with his loud personality — they'd make the ultimate infiltration team. Nobody will ever expect it of them. Their bingo book entry alone would be hilarious.
"We'll be going now!" Naruto announces, turns, and leaves.
Kakashi folds the scroll into his pockets, gives Gato one last hard look, and says, "Be glad we didn't come with an army of ninja to assassinate all of you. The boss is being very kind!"
On the way back to Tazuna's home, Kakashi collects an assortment of paperwork from his clone. There's lots, and he gets the impression all of it is very, very shady.
"How come your clones always do what they are told, and mine disappear to go eat ramen?" Naruto asks at random, halfway to their destination.
There's a pause in his steps that Naruto surely won't notice, and there is no way he is imagining Ramen Ichiraku beset by Naruto clones, all begging for just one more bowl of noodles and broth.
"Mental discipline," Kakashi answers in deadpan. The Narutos in his mind have started accusing each other of eating up all the ramen, and have started a brawl.
"No, really!" Naruto says, "I'm not kidding! Why are your clones always so focused?"
"You have to think hard about what you need them to do," Kakashi repeats in simpler words, "if you just create them with no purpose, they do what you would rather want to do, and that is apparently eating ramen."
"Huh," Naruto says, and then, "Do you think Sasuke destroyed all the trees around Tazuna's house, or did something happen?"
The trees around the house are indeed, all felled with various chakra marks. It looks like a small tornado came through the trees.
There is no sign of Sasuke. There is no sign of Tazuna.
Some of the trees are arranged in a pattern, and most of them have lost their branches. When Naruto takes a step, the leaves seem to attach to his natural release of chakra. Kakashi cautiously steps forward to inspect their surroundings — and a little down from the house he finds Sakura.
Sakura is chopping wood with her bare hands. She seems to have started out with an axe, but the broken handle and the abandoned axe lie next to her in the grass. Naruto is audibly impressed.
When she hears them, Sakura turns around.
The pink hair of cherry blossoms hangs into her face, and she looks utterly exhausted, but when she sees them, she is obviously relieved.
"Sensei!" she shouts, and gods be damned, why was everyone on his team so loud? "This despicable Gato person has a tax on wood! Can you believe that! The villagers were to afraid to go gathering in the forest because Gato would send search patrols out! What an…" She takes a deep breath, and then continues anyway, "…asshole." She looks despondent on the really quite impressive amount of wood she hacked into tiny pieces. It's an impressive amount for the short time they were away.
"And so you decided to get them their wood all by yourself," Kakashi finishes her thought. His genin are all so adorable, but — "You do know we are shinobi, right? We never do anything in civilian matters without a mission?"
It was strange, really, how at times all of his genin reminded him of Obito. Most of the time, it also only hurt a little. It was almost… bearable?
Sakura looks at him with the biggest eyes he's ever seen outside of his own summoning pack. Naruto joins her with possibly even bigger eyes (secretly Kakashi suspects a liberal application of the "puppy dog jutsu" — the ANBU guard had spent weeks talking about that ingenious henge).
Kakashi sighs. "Technically, we aren't allowed to influence civilian matters without a mission," he repeats, so that maybe at least Sakura will understand the problem.
And it takes her awhile — he can almost see the gears in her mind rattling, her big green eyes get even bigger and she asks, "Sensei? Do you think this will keep Tazuna from freezing to death or should I make some more firewood? I'm going to find Tsunami, maybe she can tell me where to put this."
Kakashi lets his eye twinkle. "You should make sure there is no need to skimp. Let Naruto help you some. Which brings me to your other teammate; where is Sasuke?"
Strangely enough, Sasuke is not off to get killed by his brother, but doing exactly what he was supposed to do without breaking any laws or treaties. Tazuna is hard at work, maybe because half his workforce was too scared to show up. The bridge is on its way to be finished nevertheless, and tension is running high.
However, they are not attacked for several days. Kakashi starts to think they won't be, that Gato will move out of the area without further trouble.
Of course, with only one day left on the ultimatum Kakashi left Gato with, they arrive at the building site set into a mist so dense it appears almost solid.
Kakashi motions Naruto to start a defensive formation — curiously, Naruto is still the only one of his cute little students to understand his ANBU signs. Sakura knows barely more than the Academy Basics, and the more merchant-based general Konoha signs, and Sasuke can fluently sign the old Uchiha Police codes, but it's a hit-and-miss with the ANBU codes, though his general Konoha is decent. Naruto knows swearwords in all the languages, even the spoken ones. They are fairly quick on their feet, his genin.
The mist is pervasive (laced with a genjutsu, perhaps) and inhibits natural chakra sensing.
The first two appearances by Zabuza are neatly dispatched by Sasuke — water clones, and then Kakashi looses focus of the battle; because Zabuza's fake-hunter apprentice has a bloodline talent.
It leaves frightfully obvious why Zabuza had left just after the bloodline purges, maybe even why he is trying to get back home. It also makes frightfully obvious that the best case scenario for them would be leaving without any of their enemies alive — this wasn't about a mission anymore, it was about leaving no leaks and rumours behind.
Because if Kiri found out that Zabuza had kidnapped/rescued a bloodline purge…
Kakashi is caught wrong-footed again, is left fighting for his life against an opponent he should be able to defeat easily. He never before had the impression that over-working himself was such an impediment towards his fighting ability. It was just stress, after all.
His genin rescue him from his lapse of judgement, and battle the apprentice to the best of their abilities. Sasuke develops his Sharingan. Paying attention to his students means he pays less to Zabuza, but they are evenly matched.
In the distance, he can feel a troop of thugs and Samurai approaching. Gato — he's braver than Kakashi thought. Or maybe he just doesn't know what he's getting into.
Naruto briefly looses control of the fox.
There's a minute in which Kakashi feels his heart shrivel up into bitesize pieces, but the chakra-absorbing mist has been blown away. He can't exactly hear Sasuke breathing, but the chakra is flowing undisturbed. Maybe he is just kidding himself.
Yet when he arms his assassination technique, the Chidori, he aims for the non-fatal, but equally debilitating areas. It's the least he can do when it seems like his enemies are showing more mercy than he is.
It's just as well, because when the apprentice makes a last minute substitution, Kakashi makes a spilt second decision and changes the trajectory back to his original opponent.
Kakashi strikes true.
Zabuza is laying on the ground. Kakashi may have aimed for the non-fatal areas, but his lightning technique was made to take out everything. (He doesn't even know what he hit. This is what his nightmares are made of. Sasuke is lying on the ground, unmoving.)
There's a loud sob behind him. (Naruto? The apprentice?)
Kakashi approaches gingerly. He didn't hit full frontal. The entire left side of his body seems paralysed—brain damage? Zabuza is conscious.
"You better watch out for my apprentice, Hatake. You have an obligation now," Zabuza whispers with his last breath when he comes near.
"Ha ha ha!" Gato laughs blithely in the distance. He really has no idea what he's getting into. Kakashi would pity him, if he wasn't so despicable. "You were useless anyway! I can't believe you wanted so much money— too bad I didn't want to pay either way!" He gave a sign to his army of thugs and samurai. "Now prepare to die!"
With a helpless but angry cry, Haku jumps on the business man and pummels him into the ground with his bare hands. An uncontrolled splash of ice buries itself into the group of thugs and samurai, holding some of them in icelike structures, piercing others, and scaring the rest to kingdom come. Those who could, ran.
Kakashi has seen plenty of people even comrades die on his jutsu, and Zabuza is still coherent enough for a rescue effort. For fighting an A-rank missing nin, his genin are in perfect health. He crouches down next to Zabuza — his heartbeat is erratic.
"Sakura!" He bellows. "My bag, there's a summoning scroll. It says Pakkun. Activate the seal with about enough chakra for a full body henge."
He rips of some reasonably clean bandages, and presses them onto the slash wound that's still sluggishly bleeding.
"Sasuke. Get me the apprentice. He's water nature."
Sasuke shouts loudly for Haku - the apprentice's name?
Zabuza has his eyes closed, but he's still semi-conscious and complains with a low whine when Kakashi depresses his ribcage, "Why won't you let me die."
"You aren't going to die today, asshole." Pakkun says—finally he's here.
"I'm already hallucinating, it can't be that far away," Zabuza coughs.
"Are you really sure, we want to save him?" Pakkun complains, but he's already been converting nature chakra into something they can introduce into Zabuza that won't kill him instantly and help him deal with the torrents of electricity Kakashi used to fry him from the inside.
"That doesn't look like medical chakra," Sakura says from the sidelines.
"It's not," sweat is poring down his nose, and he'd really wish he had some more chakra to convert into water affinity, but he's no demon, and he left his fucking seal matrices at home because those are fucking heavy, but from now on he's going to be taking them on trips to the bathhouse.
Haku finally appears beside him quiet and pale like a ghost. "Zabuza?" he asks, and Kakashi is such a moron, and also a sucker for love stories or whatever, and he grits his teeth and bears down on holding Pakkun's sacrifice and Zabuza's body together.
"If you could—transfuse water chakra—"
Despite his rampage, Haku has enough chakra left for a great patch job and enough wits to himself to understand what Kakashi is doing. Zabuza is now unconscious, though, and Kakashi is pretty near fainting himself.
"Naruto," he calls, his vision gets spotty and turns black. "Get us to Tazuna's."
And he passes out again.
Notes: (Kakashi really does not get how the mentally traumatized one is also his most well-behaved student. Poor Kakashi.) Beware. The following paragraphs contains opinions.
(1) People may have noticed that this is not the least bit canon compliant. That's partly because fuck canon anyway, I want to do it my way; and the most obvious plotholes were left by executive meddling anyway, so.
(2) Recently, I heard a lot about how people are afraid to critique works? And like, if you don't want to critique someone who creates in his free time something that's free for you to enjoy, that's really admirable of you. But if you want to help me create something better, and you point out spelling mistakes (I found one on my own in the summary a few days ago, and boy, was I embarrassed.) or other obvious mistakes and also tell me why they are mistakes, I would explicitly give you permission. (You don't have to! There's the perfectly all right method of pushing the back button!) Anyway. I know my writing can be a bit confused (I often am, when I reread) and if there's something unclear I would really love clarification.
TL;DR : It's perfectly fine to like stuff, and still think it could be better. Concrit is welcome! All things (aside from rude, unhelpful comments) are welcome! I love all of you! Thanks for all the comments!
