Chapter 9
The training ground to which Sasuke had been ordered was unlike any of the others in which he'd trained. For one, it didn't have the normal three wooden posts in its center. Instead, a large oak tree had been planted, or rather, the area around it had been cleared to create a training field. The tree was enormous, its canopy shielding nearly the entirety of the field from the sun, its roots pushing through the dirt to make the actual training ground uneven. What wasn't taken up by these roots was covered in the normal dried and rotting leaves and branches found on a forest floor, making the illusion of training in Konoha's surrounding woods complete. The trunk itself, large enough that it would take four people with their arms outstretched to fully surround it, was scored with kunai and shuriken marks, dotted here and there with mounted and well-used targets.
At seven in the morning, the sun was peeking through the branches and casting a golden glow over the earth and ground cover, and the leaves on the trees were whispering of a slight breeze that swept over the village. Sasuke, who had just arrived, crossed over the natural mulch silently, with the unconscious skill of a ninja born and raised in Konohagakure. At any other time, he would probably have found the empty training ground peaceful, even comfortable. Now, however, he was much more annoyed that his new teammates were late for their first meeting. It did not bode well for the rest of their time training together. His eyes narrowed in irritation, then he climbed the tree to a height at which he would see his teammates coming and settled back to wait.
At about 7:02, Sasuke caught sight of two figures coming out of the trees surrounding an adjoining training field. They appeared to be walking together, and if the ease and silence of the movements of the one on the right was any indication, he was a jounin. Probably the sensei of the one on the left, considering the seemingly endless lecture. The left figure looked vaguely familiar, with brown scraggly hair and big glasses, and Sasuke searched his memory until he placed him as one of those kids who used to follow Naruto around, the ones who always announced themselves with stupid epitaphs. Which was this one, he wondered. Not Konohamaru, he was the one with the ponytail who called Naruto 'nii-san.' This was the other one, the one in desperate need of a tissue… Amon? Udon? Possibly. Sasuke figured he'd find out soon enough.
Possibly-Udon seemed to be only half listening to his sensei as though the lecture was a common occurance, the rest of his concentration on looking around him. Sasuke could only assume he was seeking out his temporary teammates, which would have been good if only he wasn't being so obvious about it. Even more telling, the kid still hadn't noticed Sasuke in the tree by the time he and his sensei reached the field, though the jounin's eyes flicked to his location quickly before he returned them to the genin (the lecture didn't even pause, Sasuke noted).
"…chakra control needs to improve dramatically if you hope to use any medical jutsus! A well-trained medic-nin uses his chakra as a doctor uses his instruments. Your control should be so precise that you can cut as though wielding a scalpel…"
"But Ebisu-sensei," the boy interrupted, turning his head to look back at his teacher, "Shizune-san says that a good medic-nin can also do all those things without chakra, in case there's a situation in which he can't use it."
"That does not mean you should use other means exclusively," the jounin responded, superiority from presumed greater knowledge practically dripping off his tongue. "It is my job as your jounin sensei to ensure you are capable of performing in any and all situations…"
"Someone's coming," the boy said, his head turned to his right. He wiped his nose absent-mindedly on his sleeve, squinting at the figures Sasuke had spotted about twenty seconds before him, while Udon-or-whoever was defending his position on medic-nin practices.
The figures turned out to be two women, or rather, a woman and a girl. The woman Sasuke remembered as the examiner during the second round of the chuunin exam, the one who had cut Naruto's face with a kunai when he'd said something asinine. He couldn't remember her name. The girl, on the other hand, he was pretty sure he'd never seen before, though her eyes made it pretty obvious she was a Hyuuga. She was also looking around her much more obviously than was necessary (especially with her blood-line limit, Sasuke thought disdainfully). She, too, managed to completely miss Sasuke sitting in the tree, though the examiner's eyes zeroed in on him the moment she entered the clearing. She smirked at him and winked (Sasuke raised an eyebrow back, curious despite himself about what she thought was going on), before turning away and hailing the other jounin.
"Ebisu, stop talking the kid's ear off. I could hear you all the way on the other side of the training field."
Ebisu stood up to his full height and glared at the woman. "Anko-san, I think I am perfectly capable of teaching my students on my own."
"Teaching, sure," Anko said, shrugging. "But I'll bet this isn't the first time your brat's heard this speech. Am I right?" she asked, turning to Ebisu's student. Maybe-Udon gave a sheepish grin and nodded slightly, sniffing a little as he did so. Ebisu did not look amused.
"Oh, don't get all uptight," Anko admonished him, laughing. The male jounin scowled a little more, and she sighed. "Fine, fine. We'll start, then. Jeez…" she muttered, rolling her eyes as she walked over to the tree and leaned against the trunk right under where Sasuke sat. "Right, so you're here because…"
"Shouldn't we wait for the third member of the team, Anko-sensei?" the Hyuuga interrupted, raising her eyebrows incredulously. "He should hear this too, right?"
"I'm sure he will," Anko drawled, smirking. Ebisu's eyes flicked to Sasuke again and he frowned slightly, glancing at his apparently completely blind student. "Anyway, you're here because you all don't have teams with whom you can take the chuunin exam. You'll be acting as a three-man unit…"
"If the third member of that unit deigns to show up," muttered the Hyuuga girl disdainfully. The-genin-who-might-be-Udon looked troubled.
"Maybe he got held up somewhere," he defended. "I'm sure there's a reason why he's not here."
"Hmph," said the female genin, crossing her arms, then jumped as a shuriken whirled past her head. She turned and glared at her teacher, who had an unrepentant grin on her face that could cut glass.
"Are you done, Hanabi-chan?" the jounin asked, her voice sickly sweet. "Or do I have to make more of an effort to keep your attention?"
"Sorry, sensei."
"Right then. As I was saying, you will be a temporary three-man team for the entirety of the chuunin exam, and either Ebisu or I will go with you as your jounin representative. We'll talk that out later," she said, addressing Ebisu. The man nodded, and Anko continued. "So, let's get acquainted, shall we? Let's see…" Anko gave that glass-cutter grin again. "How about you give your name, your age, how many times you've taken the chuunin exam, why you are taking it this time, and… when you got here today?" Sasuke rolled his eyes where nobody could see him. As she couldn't see him, Anko took no heed and pointed at let's-call-him-Udon. "You first," she declared imperiously.
The kid stood up a little straighter, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and gave a small smile. "I'm Udon," he started. (If Sasuke were anyone else, he would have allowed himself a moment of smugness). "I'm fifteen, and have taken the chuunin exam once before. I'm taking the exam again because I had to bow out last time due to an injury, and I got here at about 7."
"7:02," Ebisu interrupted with a sigh. "Because you were not ready when I came to retrieve you."
"Sorry," Udon said, looking sheepishly at Anko and Hanabi.
Anko waved a hand in a "don't worry about it" gesture. "Now you," she declared, nodding at her student.
"Hyuuga Hanabi. I'm fourteen, and I've never taken the chuunin exam before." She crossed her arms imperiously. "I'm the only member of my team ready to take this exam, and I got here at 7:03."
"Pleased to meet you," Udon said, smiling at her. She looked him up and down, then turned away.
Anko looked supremely unconcerned. "Well, then, that just leaves the last member of the team." She tilted her head up, the angle allowing Sasuke to see the heaven seal on her neck, and smirked. "How about it?"
Sasuke let his mask of indifference fall into place as he jumped down and landed easily in the middle of the little circle. Hanabi stepped back, shocked, and Udon reached for a kunai instinctively even as he blinked in bewilderment. Sasuke turned to Anko. "Uchiha Sasuke. Eighteen in four days. Once. Both my teammates are already chuunin." He glanced at his teammates then, letting his annoyance seep a little into his voice. "7:00 sharp, as ordered."
Hanabi blushed, Udon looked embarrassed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, Ebisu frowned and pushed his glasses up his nose, and Anko cackled. Sasuke sighed inwardly. He had the feeling this was going to be one of those experiences that was better forgotten as soon as possible.
ooo
The day bled into night into another day, and another, and another. Sasuke trained, and watched his temporary teammates train, filing away what information he could on how they thought and fought. It was a way to fill the days, along with a few D-class missions in the evenings, and Sasuke had always found training an easy task to get lost in.
Udon had good reflexes and worked well in tandem with other people, but his abilities were average at best and he seemed to have very little potential as a fighter. He tended to hang back from the main action and use traps and projectile weapons to insure he stayed there. His aim was somewhat less-than-perfect, which made Sasuke question just how well this strategy actually worked.
Apparently, he was also training to be his team's medic-nin, though he was by his own admittance not as good as he could have been. Sasuke was somewhat unsurprised. The boy did claim that his field dressings were killer (horrible choice of wording aside). Sasuke felt he was somewhat justified in being hesitant to test that particular skill.
Hanabi, on the other hand, wasn't bad considering her rank (and the fact that Sasuke was comparing her to what he remembered of Hyuuga Neji). She was quick, and used her family's fighting style fairly well. Unfortunately, she tended to move offensively instead of remaining on the defense and letting her opponents come to her, which was what the style called for. This meant she was usually off-balance and open for the first few seconds while in range of the enemy, a fact that Sasuke doubted an enemy would have any trouble noticing and exploiting. Even worse, Hanabi had a tendency to work independently, a fact that Sasuke suspected was the actual reason her team had not yet attempted to take the chuunin exam. If the girl ran forward and got injured during a fight with nobody to back her up, she would likely die, and Sasuke couldn't imagine the Hyuugas would be happy about such an occurrence.
The senseis took turns overseeing the training, presumably so that their students would have the benefit of mentoring from the jounin with whom they usually worked as well as a jounin with whom they didn't. Personally, Sasuke thought they'd all be better off training alone.
Ebisu seemed to have an opinion on everything, whether or not he knew what he was talking about. Sasuke lost count the first day of how many times the jounin felt the need to stop a spar to correct something either Udon or Hanabi did wrong (not that they didn't need to be corrected, of course, but fifteen minutes on why someone's stance wasn't wide enough was slightly overkill). He didn't correct Sasuke, thankfully. After all, the young man doubted the Council would still allow him to participate in the exam if he had to kill one of his teammate's instructors.
Anko had a different approach. She would stand to the side and watch, sporadically tossing a kunai or jutsu into the mix, though whether this was supposed to be helpful or just annoying Sasuke had yet to figure out. She would also occasionally grin at the three of them as though she thought they were the sweetest bunch of fangless vipers she'd ever seen, and sometimes would accompany this look with a wise-crack about something stupid someone had done, both of which Sasuke was pretty sure were merely meant to be annoying.
For his part, Sasuke showed his teammates just enough for them to figure out when to stay the hell out of his way. He didn't have time to be a teacher and was used to hiding the full extent of his abilities anyway. Besides, the two genin probably wouldn't find the information very useful. From what Sasuke could tell they were just settling into styles of their own and wouldn't be able to modify them very much to accommodate a teammate much faster and stronger than them.
By the third night, Sasuke was internally debating the merits of knocking them out and throwing them in a shoulder sack for the entirety of the second round. It would probably be much easier on everyone.
ooo
Sasuke was in the shower when he felt the newly-set proximity jutsu go off. He'd set it up the first day he'd met with his new team, deciding that not knowing when someone was coming onto his property, mentally and physically exhausted or not, was inexcusable. Good thing I did, too, he thought grimly, as he felt the foreign chakra brush against his own and get closer. I wouldn't have had time to dry off otherwise.
As it was, by the time Kakashi had let himself in through Sasuke's window, the owner of the house was in the kitchen, towel wrapped firmly around his waist and hair dripping soap, armed with a handful of shuriken, his unsheathed sword, and a severely tried temper. When he saw who it was, he considered attacking anyway.
His decision not to was strained near to breaking when Kakashi did nothing but smile serenely in the face of Sasuke's emanating killing intent. Silence reigned for a total of four minutes and forty-two seconds.
Finally, Sasuke decided Kakashi wasn't going to explain himself without prompting, and loosened his clenched jaw enough to speak. "What do you want?" he asked, each syllable frosted with as much ice as he could pack onto it.
"Do I need to want something to visit my former student?" Kakashi asked mildly. Sasuke threw a shuriken, which was dodged with expected ease. Kakashi raised his hands in the universal 'I surrender' gesture. "Now, now, I come in peace." Sasuke aimed another shuriken. "I just came to take you out to dinner," Kakashi told him hastily. Sasuke paused and raised an eyebrow. "…Or rather, take you out to a birthday dinner," Kakashi clarified, reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck.
"…Che," Sasuke said, disgusted, and lowered his hand. "How did you know it was my birthday, anyway?" Sasuke certainly hadn't told him. He hadn't seen Kakashi since Naruto was in the hospital, in fact, and hadn't thought of his birthday himself all day. Well, he'd thought "Oh, I'm eighteen now, aren't I?" in between bites of warmed-up miso soup this morning, but that hardly counted.
Kakashi was speaking again. "I got your file when I accepted you as a member of my genin team," he explained, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the sill of the open window. Sasuke raised the eyebrow again and gave his former sensei his best incredulous look. The Kakashi he remembered wouldn't have read those files, let alone remembered a date on them. "…And I heard Anko talking about your first meeting with Udon and Hanabi," Kakashi conceded. Sasuke snorted. That figured…
There was silence for another few moments, in which the two shinobi just looked at each other. Finally, Kakashi shrugged. "We can go after you finish your shower," he offered in a tone that sounded like the love-child of magnanimous and patronizing. Sasuke glared, and tossed another shuriken (which Kakashi dodged) and stormed back to his still-running shower, Kakashi's parting "don't forget to wash behind your ears," following him down the hallway.
ooo
They ended up going for barbeque, though how Sasuke couldn't be sure. One moment he'd finished his shower and had gone back to the kitchen, fully intending to kick Kakashi out and then eat the fish in his refrigerator for dinner, the next he was vetoing Ichiraku Ramen (one of the many places Kakashi suggested, all of which apparently came from the jounin's extensive list of 'restaurants that offer take-out'). Before he knew it, he was sitting in a booth across from Kakashi, feeling insanely awkward and annoyed about it. He would have taken this temper out on Kakashi, except the older man was reading some book from the Icha Icha series and ignoring everything else, coward that he was. Sasuke was forced to settle on looking as apathetic as possible and taking his frustration out on the piece of beef in front of him.
Somehow, vigorous chewing didn't seem to be getting his mood across the way he would have liked.
Predictably, the meal continued in silence. Sasuke ate his damned barbeque, and watched with reluctant interest born of extreme boredom as Kakashi's food disappeared piece by piece behind the book. The waitress came over once, but left as quickly as possible once Sasuke gave her a look that compared her to a maggot, were one to discover a maggot in one's refrigerator. He decided that the meal was over when he found himself almost wishing she'd had more of a backbone, if only so that she'd come over every once in a while and break up the monotony.
It was dark when Sasuke finally got back to his house, Kakashi following silently. The night was overcast, depriving the two people walking through the dead Uchiha district of even the moon by which to see. Not that either shinobi needed light to know where he was going, of course.
Kakashi looked completely at ease as usual, from what Sasuke could tell in the dark. His hands were in his pockets, book temporarily in the kunai holder at his hip. Standing at the front door to his home and looking at his silent companion, Sasuke wondered if his mother's ghost would forgive him if he just went inside and closed the door in Kakashi's face.
"The Hokage received a message from Sakura today," Kakashi declared suddenly, as though this were part of a conversation they'd been having. Sasuke raised an eyebrow at his former teacher, the action lost in the nearly complete darkness of the silent Uchiha complex. Kakashi continued as though Sasuke had responded in a way he could actually know about. "She was delayed a few days with one of the cases, but she should be back tomorrow."
"…Hn," Sasuke said, wondering why Kakashi thought he'd care that Sakura was four days late in returning. He wished it were a little lighter, suddenly, so that he could see the other man better and possible gather some clues about what he was thinking from body language. Not that Kakashi's body language ever showed him as anything but slightly bored. Bastard…
"…Would you like some tea?" he finally asked, manners getting the better of his wish to be done with this encounter as soon as possible. Kakashi shook his head.
"No, but thank you for the offer," he returned solicitously. Sasuke took this to mean his duties as a host were finished, and opened his door. He was halfway through it before Kakashi spoke again.
"Sasuke." And Sasuke turned his head just enough to look over his shoulder, wondering what else the jounin could possibly want. Somehow, even though he could barely make out the man's silhouette, he knew he was smiling brightly. "If you ever need anything, let me know." Sasuke blinked, completely surprised, and opened his mouth to respond, but Kakashi was already walking away. Sasuke could just make out the hand raised in fairwell. He frowned at Kakashi's retreating back before going inside and shutting the door firmly behind him.
ooo
There was a time, Sasuke knew, when he could have become close to Kakashi. Or at least, he could have become as close to Kakashi as Kakashi ever let anyone. They were similar in a lot of ways, some of the most important being the sharingan and a mutual understanding of loss. Before he'd left, Sasuke had wondered, way in the back of his mind where he rarely ever looked, if perhaps that understanding could grow into something a little deeper than a teacher-student bond.
It couldn't now, of course. Sasuke had severed that bond along with all his others when he left the village, and Kakashi wasn't the sort to pursue something long dead and buried. The man hadn't even come after Sasuke when he'd left, proving that of all the members of team 7, Kakashi was definitely the most intelligent. He knew when he was looking at a losing battle.
Still, that night, as Sasuke lay in bed and tried in vain to shut his brain off long enough to fall asleep, he wondered for the first time in a long time what would have happened if he hadn't so definitively broken his bond with Kakashi. Oh, he didn't expect they'd have the type of relationship that Naruto and Iruka had, of course. Neither of them were quite open enough for that. But… maybe… maybe Kakashi wouldn't only appear every few months, when circumstances made it nearly inevitable. Maybe they'd have had something to say to each other at dinner that night.
He wondered why Kakashi had offered his help, should Sasuke ever need it. They were hardly close, and never had been, after all. Sasuke didn't need a teacher any more, and even if he did, that teacher wouldn't be Kakashi.
His last thought before falling asleep was that maybe he'd find out when Kakashi's birthday was, just in case…
ooo
AN: Look! I'm alive! –waves–
Sorry this took so long to get out, folks. Let's just say I'm dropping econ and leave it at that, all right? Next chapter's in motion, so it shouldn't be as long to wait. I hope… Well, check my bio as usual.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed!
Daikirei: –blushes– Thank you! I'm so glad you're enjoying the story. Hope this chapter measured up…
Boshoku: –laughs– Indeed it is. Hopefully, having been trained by Ebisu and Anko, they'll be a bit more resilient…
Sszw85: I'm glad you're enjoying! Yes, Lee will appear sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, he's not someone Sasuke usually interacts with, so I needed a specific set of events for him to make it into the plot. But he's coming!
Dragon77: –hangs head in shame– Sorry this took so long! I hope you enjoyed anyway!
MadaMag: –grin– I'm glad you're enjoying. Can't really answer your questions, though. That would be spoiling, and I really can't do that. Guess you'll just have to wait and see what happens… –innocent whistling–
Jade: –hug– for my wonderful beta. Give her a round of applause, everyone! Without her, this likely wouldn't make any sense at all!
Right. That's it, I think. If I missed anyone, I'm really sorry! I got a lot of reviews this time around (or at least, a lot for me…) Until next time, everyone!
