A shinobi is a high school student like another - 28

First, forgive the lateness of this chapter, chapter that was already done and written a while ago, but didn't 'fit', and I lost interest in canon Naruto. Then school began again, I got attacked by CLAMP and rabid CLAMP bunnies (see homepage) and generally got busy with RL. However, none of this means I forgot this story. I fully intend to really finish it, and this is some part of the first steps. This is a filler chapter - action and revelations are coming. Fast. Hold on.

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The streets seemed more dirty than usual, the snow melted and frozen again into mud in the gutters. The buildings were grey and heavy under the sky whitening with the sun rising somewhere, hurting the eyes. I left a crunching print on a sidewalk edge. The city needed another snowfall - many more were to come, as mid-January was barely past. Winter loved to stay here until May. Maybe the quality of the air was to its liking. I coughed the toxic fumes that the hurried morning traffic breathed out and kept walking, my street four blocs away, Haku and Zabuza's long left behind me.

I -well, the part of me who wasn't making plans and calculations to obey the orders I had been given- was wondering how long a person could take to get out of shock -it was rather obvious I was still head-first in it, still functioning by force of training, but I just couldn't care. Not caring couldn't be very healthy, could it? No, probably no... I caught myself expecting the pain, just a far-away ache now, present at every step. Not healthy,no.

I stepped into the fridge I inhabited before I realized it. I had to pull myself back together, to take back the control of my thoughts, of my mind, of everything - I couldn't afford to break now. The first step of this process was doing what I was supposed to do, to follow the orders I had been given. Good things that, following my orders. The part of me that wasn't thinking about orders got itself unceremoniously gagged and thrown into a corner of my mind.

I let my bag drop down in the main room, didn't bother with the light. The traps and chakra-thingies -for lack of a better term- surrounding the house hadn't been disturbed. No one had came. It didn't mean that I couldn't be the target of the next warning attack. It didn't mean I could stop being on guard in my own house.

I would need the uniform I kept here, and the weapons too, because going back to the HQ was discouraged for now -discouraged in the 'keep low and stay in the sleeve, ace' sense. I kept myself focused on what I had to do, because I could not afford to forget anything, to underestimate any piece of information I could have. I had to focus because there was no doubt lives depended and would depend on what was going to happen, and on my decisions...

... because it was easier, so much more easier than to think about something else, and to make my thoughts go round and round to find a solution that didn't exist... I took a deep breath, my hands on my face, my back against the door. Three days worth of stubble itched my palms.

Okay. All right. I could do it. Step one: bathroom. Step two... I'd worry about it when I'd get to it.

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Slipping into the old Uchiha compound where the actuals ones were currently living had been a bit more complicated than I had expected. The security had been tightened to the same level as in the Government main buildings, security agents and camera every two steps, movement detectors and dogs -and this was only what I could saw from the roofs. All of this had seemed... inappropriate to the place. Seeing bonzes strolling on the cleared rock steps in the immaculate gardens, multicolored kimonos draped on the balustrades, high ranking dignitaries conversing before delicates shogi and men wearing katana would have been more normal. I had felt my lips thin without emotion beneath the mask. At least was I in the original spirit of the compound.

I had quickly spotted the others nins affected here -they had let me pass with a brief nod. I had circled the low buildings flattened by the diffused light, looking for Itachi without being noticed by the normal security.

Reno had started when I had straightened next to him. Itachi had been on the other side of the one room building - said building was a little off the side of the main buildings, an ancient dojo maybe, too large to have been reserved only to the tea ceremony. I had already mapped the place when I stepped inside. Another thinning of lips, hidden from view. The building would do, for lack of HQ and training rooms.

"Hound," had saluted Carrot Top. He had seemed vaguely nervous under his studied slouch. Maybe it had been the fault of the tanto saying hi above my shoulder, and of my voluntarily off-key corporal language.

"Hound," had saluted Itachi from the other side, his eyes guarded -but black.

I had nodded in return, hadn't asked him to call me sensei -and had started without useless wastes of time.

It had seemed obvious at the time that training Itachi would take months -even years, until body and mind become one, move together as one, until he found his limits, until chakra flooded his body as naturally as blood in his veins, until all of this reunited allowed him to use the Sharingan fully and consciously. He had the basics of hand-to-hand -and, when opening my eye, bases of chakra stock more important that I would have expected, but not enough yet to pass directly to ninjutsu. Theory would have to suffice for now

His eyes had flashed red -and my eye had throbbed in return. I had tuned out the pounding in my temples. Theory briefly tested; I would have to talk to him about this later, when he'd have more control.

There was not much more to add to what happened this first day, nothing had seemed to touch me -even the bang-your-head-against-a-wall headache triggered by the Sharingans had seemed to happen on an horizon event around an hollow shell. I was almost annoyed to have found the right explication right away; I wouldn't have the excuse of research to get bury under archives and stop thinking.

I hadn't crossed the city to my fridge once night had fallen, leaving Konoha silent. I had switched to the second part of my mission.

I had narrowly missed losing my balance several times while chakra-jumping from rooftop to rooftops above deserted streets. Roofs were still pristine white, untouched -the streets below only seemed darker and dirtier under the orange glow of the public light in comparison. I took great care to scramble my imprints, in order for them to be mistaken for cat paw-prints. I didn't think that anyone would really believe an human had walked here, but I had no idea if the alternate acces ways like roofs were under suspicion of surveillance or not. Better not to take any chance.

I had grabbed a drainpipe and had swinged in the shadows above an alley more quickly than an human eye could track movement, and had stopped there. The window I was facing was just far away enough that I could see the people inside. People, plural. And a well known-profile... it was Emily next to him, and I was too far-away to be able to read on their lips, when they weren't sitting on the bed, their backs to the window.

The team discreetly keeping an eye around and on the 'Ocean's shore' had let me go back with no more problems then when I had came.

In this manner, the first day passed.

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The second day passed. The sky was still as white. Iruka still wasn't alone. In a way, it was reassuring me. In another, some part of me wanted to talk to him. And this part could only conceive this conversation if alones. I was still too far away to read on their lips when they weren't back to the window. Numb inside.

The third day passed. Itachi learnt things, and remembered them, almost too quickly -as if he had already underwent training. He could already control his Sharingan perfectly during short period of time. The end of the sham with 'Hound' was a question of time. The war raging openly in the city due to the underground operations of the gangs moving against each others was also a mere question of time -the last news heard by Reno weren't reassuring. I lost my balance while going back to the house, and barely avoided a ten meters fall. Iruka still wasn't alone.

The fourth day passed. Iruka wasn't in his studio, but in his uncle and aunt's apartment. Emily had closed her curtains when he had walked in her room. The team at the 'Ocean's shore' was a two-man team this day, and Kodia was here. He confirmed that Iruka hadn't moved from there of the whole day, and that no-one had heard of Tôji Mizuki since he had walked out -no-one had seen him around Iruka's either. And also that the rare encounters during this last three days between our forces and Otsuka's had intensified to the point we had asked the regular police to sit out of most calls, and to rather send the special intervention squads, even for 'mere' bar brawls.

The fifth day passed. The sky had turned to grey-ash. I had spent three hours sitting hidden on Iruka's windowsill. He hadn't moved from his cousin's room since they had came back from school. Haku forced me to eat and sleep at their place when I had stopped for news and had almost spat my lungs out. Terry had been killed during the day.

The sixth day passed, under the falling snow. Itachi had already mastered the most basics jutsu -with the Sharingan's help, all right, but too fast, too well. Reno had a bruise on his face, and didn't stay inside with us during the 'lesson'. I waited for Iruka sitting against the wall near the backdoor, my uniform in the bag, my phone and a message no-one was answering to in hand. I walked back to the house among the shadows.

The seventh day -I wish I could have said it passed in an artistic grey haze like the others.

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I spectacularly slided down as I was taking like the other days a different way to go to the old Uchiha compound, sliding from shadow to shadow. I realized I was flat on my back and my breath taken somewhere away, the sky turned back to an even white -- and the sky-y... is a hazy shade of winter...-- up there in between the high buildings above my head. I didn't even react -just shifted my mask a bit to the side to breathe more easily.

I scared myself at this moment.

My 'professional' conscience kicked my ass and insulted me for having, even involuntarily, neglected myself. Involuntarily? Who the hell was I kidding? I was using the Sharingan everyday, for period of times longer that the inherent will to survive every human had -and so inherent in me too, despite whatever reservations you could have on this- was happy with, I was still not back to top shape as throat and lungs were violently protesting, and it was clear I wasn't about to go back to it soon seeing as I was keeping on exhausting myself and bypassing meals.

The sky, white up there in between the buildings, didn't do anything. It was about time I got my head outta my ass. Change of program.

My head was maybe not out enough yet, but it was enough for the cocked up idea of the century to fall on me -the 'work or fail' kinda plan, no in between. I didn't even dare hope it would work all the way, since I was asking for something of an end-of-week-miracle magnitude -and everyone knows how this ends. The only thing to do was rush in.

I had taught what I could of the theory to Itachi. It was time we passed on what was happening in the real world, the very one where theory was no more that a nice memory next to real instinct and training. It was time I faced reality too. It was time I stopped to hide behind Hound's mask. It was time I did what I had been asked to.

I took the time to send a new text message to Iruka -message that probably no-one would answer to, like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before...- then took care to fold back the uniform in my bag, and to shrug on the set of clothes I had kept since yesterday, the one I had waited for Iruka in. Hat screwed in place, I set off again -but quietly on foot, like any other person.

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chap' 29 already in the works - will be accomoded to RL needs, but I say 'Before Christmas'