36 Another Pointless Fight Scene

Or, What Happens When a Bald Man Messes Up a Pretty Boy's Hairstyle.

Two hours had passed and, after lingering over a savory pot of sukiyaki, the pair vacated their table in favor of a leisurely evening stroll. "So tell me again, Tori-chan – how did you manage to get us such a choice table during peak dining hours?"

Kotori smiled secretively and replied, "One should always use their assets, shouldn't they?" A brief adjustment of her neckline to make sure her point was not missed. "But no, seriously… much as the cleavage would have helped, I made a reservation just like everyone else does."

Taiki snorted derisively. "So much for feminine mystique… I've been wondering about something else too, though."

"Do tell."

"Not to press my luck or risk jinxing things by overanalyzing, but why did you ask me out tonight? Last time I checked, you'd sooner rot in hell than be linked to me in anything other than an official sense. Also, we both know that your uncle will kill me if he finds out about this." The youth then sideglanced his companion, muttering, "Unless that was your plan in the first place, you sneaky wench."

Her sweet smile of earlier returned, Kotori patting Taiki's arm comfortingly as she replied, "Trust me. If anyone is going to kill you, it will be me… and no one else." When this was met with a blink and blanching of face, the girl snickered. "You think I'm kidding, don't you."

"I'm trying to decide whether to be frightened or reassured," Taiki grumbled after a moment. "One thing I would ask, though, is that if and when that time comes – be gentle?"

"That will depend upon my mood and the circumstances, my dear." All malice vanished from her voice when Kotori spoke again, her voice almost inaudible as she said, "All else aside, the past few months have been kind of rough on all of us but we've all survived in our own ways. We've been thrown out into a sea of unknowns, and the first thing someone does in that case is look for the familiar… Much as you may piss me off, there's still something familiar about you that makes me feel safe." She paused, coughed, and looked up at Taiki. "If this is making you uncomfortable, I'll stop here. I've already said more than I was going to."

"Um – no, that's all right," mumbled Taiki, shaking his head distractedly. "It's just that I could have sworn I heard something unusual…"

Taking a step away from him, Kotori closed her eyes and focused her hearing. "You're right, that is strange… albeit not unexpected."

Taiki frowned worriedly. "So what is it?"

Blue eyes snapping open suddenly in alarm, Kotori hissed, "Angry bald man yelling. Duck!" She snatched at Taiki's arm and jerked him down into a crouch, an action taken none too soon as an eerie whistling sound passed overhead. This was followed by a thunk as whatever it was buried itself in a wall immediately behind where Taiki's head had been moments earlier, and a glance up and back revealed it to be a large carving knife with its edge glistening from a recent sharpening. "What the - ?"

"Damnit! I missed," came an unearthly growl from a lone figure not far from the pair. "Of course the aerodynamics would be slightly different considering it wasn't intended for throwing, and I am slightly impaired…"

Kotori stood up and dusted herself off, then fixed a murderous stare on the intruder. "That was uncalled for, Uncle, and you know it. Couldn't you have just used a kunai or shuriken like anyone else would have?" She looked down at Taiki, still crouched down and now holding a hand to his head with a stunned expression. "You aren't injured, are you?" Taiki muttered something almost inaudible, and Kotori shook her head. "Speak up, I can't hear you."

The stunned expression turned into something terrible as Taiki held up a lock of his hair, frayed and severed from the knife's passage. "He cut… my hair."

This merited an eye roll and a grumble from the redhead. "Give it up, Tai, it's not the end of the world. It's just a strand of hair and it'll grow back."

"But it's my hair. My beautiful hair!" Taiki sprang up and wrenched the carving knife from the wall behind him, clenching it in a white-knuckled grip and considering his next attack.

In an attitude of clinical detachment Kotori noticed that the metal of the knife now seemed to shiver with a faint electrical charge, and a part of her wondered if this was intentional before the rest of her snapped back to the current situation. "Good god, both of you back off already! We don't need another pointless fight on our hands."

"But he cut my hair," snarled Taiki, raising the knife as he prepared to charge.

"Stay out of this, Kotori," Takeshi snapped at his niece, drawing a more traditional weapon and holding it ready as he tried to gauge his opponent's strategy. "We'll have a nice little sit-down later once I've taken care of this one!"

Kotori barely had time to move aside as Taiki dashed at his opponent, wasting no chances and going straight for the scalp with his sparking blade. Takeshi waited until the very last moment and then twisted aside, slashing out with his kunai across Taiki's hand. The youth gasped in sudden pain, missing his intended target and instead slicing through the knot at the back of Takeshi's bandanna. Instead of being embarrassed at this sudden uncovering, the jounin swept the loosened cloth from his head and into his opponent's face, momentarily blinding Taiki and giving Takeshi the opportunity to land two more hits. In a series of fluidly executed motions, the jounin disarmed Taiki with a numbing hand strike and then jabbed him sharply in the gut, sending the younger man staggering back in disorientation.

"All right, where's that tough side we saw during the invasion?" Takeshi taunted, grinning as an indignantly sputtering Taiki cleared away the obstructions from his vision and stabilized himself for another offensive. "So I messed up your hairdo. What are you going to do about it?"

"This!" The stunned, stumbling boy that both Takeshi and Kotori had been watching now vanished in a cloud of smoke, Takeshi realizing too late that the real one had appeared behind him and grabbed the kunai from his hand. Instead of pressing the blade to the soft, vulnerable skin of Takeshi's throat, however, Taiki instead moved it in one swift slice against the carefully tended tuft of hair on the older man's chin. "Payback's a bitch, sensei."

"The soul patch! You didn't!" Wrenching the weapon away from Taiki, Takeshi once again sent the youth flying, this time with a bone-cracking punch in the face. "Unlike yours, you scum-sucking bastard, my hair won't grow back." With a ragged sigh, the jounin trimmed off the few remaining strands so that his chin was smooth. "I don't know what my ancestors did so that the gods would curse them like this, but it must have been an unforgivable offense."

"Indeed," murmured Taiki in a moment of sympathy, then shot an alarmed glance back at Kotori. "That doesn't happen to the women too, does it?"

Takeshi shook his head. "No, fortunately. They just snore like wild animals."

Taiki shuddered but then became all seriousness once again. "Curse or no, this isn't over yet. Don't tell me this is the best you can do!"

"Damn right it isn't, on both counts," retorted Takeshi. "Now fight like you mean it!"

"Men," grumbled Kotori as the two faced off yet again. "I don't think they'll mind if I go for a little walk…"

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True to Kotori's suspicions, the two combatants did not even notice when she turned and quietly walked off down the street. "I have a feeling this will take a while," she mused darkly, wincing at the now-distant zot of discharged lightning followed by several loud thuds. "I should nonetheless stay close by in case something goes horribly wrong, but these repetitive exercises in male dominance do get rather tiresome…"

Sighing, she ducked into a nearby convenience store and began perusing the shelves for a quick, portable refreshment to take back to the scene of the fight. It took a matter of minutes to find one of her favorite beverages – a vaguely citrus-flavored drink in a blue-labeled squarish bottle with an unfortunately unappetizing name – and with this in hand Kotori wandered over to the snack aisle to make another selection. She registered the presence of another person nearby but pushed this factoid to the back of her mind as she considered the staggering variety of processed potato products in front of her. "Sour cream and onion? Barbecue? Sea salt and vinegar? Low-fat?" A head-shake. "Now that's a contradictory statement if I've ever heard one." A sigh, then, "Hell with it, I'll go with pretzels."

No sooner had she grabbed a bag of said snack-food than she was forcibly reminded of the other person in the aisle, a tear-jerking sneeze causing her to drop both beverage and pretzels. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, Kotori retrieved the items and nodded acknowledgement before brushing by on her way to the checkstand. She was joined at the register a minute later by the one who had provoked her allergy, and it was with great effort that she stifled another outburst. An aggrieved sniffle took its place instead, Kotori muttering, "Good evening, Pervert-san."

"And a good evening to you. What's the occasion?" Kotori raised an eyebrow in puzzlement, wondering what prompted this question. "I noticed that you're dressed differently than your usual. Why are you letting down your guard?"

Turning slightly pink under the jounin's scrutiny, Kotori turned to accept her bagged purchases and change from the cashier and muttered, "I had a date tonight, not like it was any of your concern in the first place."

Kakashi shrugged indifferently, stepping up to pay for his own small pile of supplies. "Probably not. But part of me is curious, considering your rabid aversion to attention from members of the opposite gender…"

"Only when it comes from perverts like you," was the somewhat soggy reply, said around another sniffle.

"I'll have to admit that it's one of the stranger allergies I've seen. I wonder what the treatment would be."

"If there is one." Kotori held the door open for the older man to pass through, receiving a nod in thanks. "The gods have a strange sense of humor, that's for sure – making me allergic to perverts and causing my uncle to go incurably bald earlier than normal. I swear I need to get my karma cleansed or something." She cocked an ear to listen for a sign that the nearby combat had ceased, and sighed when she heard Taiki screaming something insulting at the top of his lungs. "They're still going at it," she grumbled, shaking her head disgustedly. "One of the worst cases of wounded pride I've ever seen. It's almost like bad late-night television – want to watch?"

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Oblivious that his actions were now being scrutinized and critiqued from two individuals sitting on a bench close by, Takeshi easily dodged a cluster of shuriken thrown his way by a disoriented Taiki. "As long as he stays under that street lamp, he's fine," murmured Kakashi to Kotori, who gave him an inquiring look for clarification. "He's changed the one crack in his vanity into a formidable weapon – it's hard to look at him straight on because of the glare."

Kotori tried this and quickly looked away, eyes smarting from the brilliant glint of artificial lighting on her uncle's chromelike scalp. "And I'd hate to see anyone try to use an ocular technique on him…"

"Missed again!" Takeshi shouted at Taiki, kicking the harmless projectiles aside. "What's the matter, are you blind? Maybe a little extra light will help you see better!" Laughing at his own wit, the older man brought his hands together in a series of seals, took in one sharp breath, then exhaled a massive gout of flame which he then controlled using the fingers of one hand.

Kotori gasped as the fireball hit Taiki full on, the sympathetic part of her praying that he could get out of the way somehow. Countering that sympathy, though, was a growing blossom of irritation at the senselessness of this whole confrontation. Her irritation came to a head as her uncle concluded his technique, smirking at the small charred spot on the street where his opponent had stood only moments earlier. Taiki shimmered into view a few feet away, patting down his charred clothing and glaring at Takeshi with death in his eyes. "Now you've really done it – not only have you cut my hair, you've singed it as well! Do you realize how much conditioner that'll take to get it back to its former state?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," was Takeshi's reply, grinning wickedly at Taiki's shock. "Lest you forget, I haven't always been this way. You know what, though? I've learned that beauty isn't everything."

"Damn right it isn't," Kotori muttered, her low comment quite audible in the silence that followed. Suddenly aware that she was being stared at, she gathered her possessions and stood up, adding, "Don't worry, Uncle, you have reaffirmed your masculinity beyond any shadow of a doubt. Taiki, I don't know if I could say the same for you, but both of you have ruined what could have been an otherwise wonderful evening with your egos. You all are idiots and I'm going home."

The girl then vanished before either combatant could form a retort. Taiki shook his head, sighing. "You know what, she was right. This will grow back… besides, I think the asymmetrical look is in right now. Kinda edgy – I like it." He then turned to leave without further comment, leaving the two jounin to their own deliberations.

"She was right," mused Kakashi after some moments' quiet thought. "This is just like bad late-night television."

"But I don't get it," Takeshi protested, rubbing a hand over his newly denuded chin. "I didn't even cut off that much and it was like the end of the world. Even I didn't raise that much of a hissy fit… back when I had hair."

"Which was what, almost a decade ago? No wonder you're out of touch." Kakashi rose from his seat, giving Takeshi one last serious look. "I know this was started by something else other than a sudden hairstyle change. Kotori was also right to call you an idiot – she may be your niece, but in the eyes of this village she's also an adult and free to make her own choices. Advise if you must, but don't make an ass out of yourself in public while doing so." An idle wave in farewell, and Kakashi likewise disappeared from view before Takeshi could protest further.

"But I only want to protect her while I still can. Is there anything wrong with that?" Shoulders sagging in quiet defeat, Takeshi retrieved the carving knife and went to return it to its rightful owner.