Training

"What!?" the three teammates squawked in unison.

His eye curved into that familiar, infuriating little eye-smile.

"I said," tone light, casual and carefree as you please, shoulders slumped and orange book out and open, "I think it would benefit you three in the long run if you were to stick your hands in that campfire."

The campfires crackle suddenly became ten times more ominous.

Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura stared blankly at their teachers for all of three minutes in stunned silence, disbelieving of the fact that even Kakashi Hatake would say something so… so…

"Suicidal," Sakura breathed. "That… that's freaking suicidal, sensei!"

Said sensei chuckled, casted her a fond look, and shook his head. "Ah, I have such cute students! Now stick your hand in the fire."

"No!" she said indignantly and hugged her hand to her chest as if to protect it.

"You're crazy, Kaka-sensei!" Naruto screeched. He did that a lot. The screeching.

"Kaka-sensei?" Kakashi queried, furrowing his brow and being ignored by his students. They were far busier with the obviously stupendously important task of loudly declaring his insanity. Ah, his students could be so cruel at times.

After awhile it started getting old so he ended the protests in what (he thought) was obviously the best possible way to end them. He demonstrated. By putting his hand in the fire.

The protests ended. Jaw dropping ensued.

The flames licked across his hand, curling around his fingers and gliding over his palm and ghosting over the back of his hand, encircling his wrist, dancing on his fingertips playfully. It tickled.

"It's not so hard." He lightly remarked.

That broke them out of the stupor.

"How are you doing that?" Sasuke asked. More like demanded, really. The Uchiha was incapable of asking anyone for anything. Incapable.

"We've talked about this," he reprimanded them. "Tree walking, tree walking."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Sakura said, "I must have missed the part about how channeling chakra to your feet help make you untouchable by flames. How silly of me."

"How silly," Kakashi agreed amicably with a nod.

He turned his hand palm up and wiggled his fingers, watching the flames respond to his movement, flickering around before settling again.

"No, while I realize that was sarcasm what you just said is actually true, Sakura."

All eyes were on him.

"Remember the part where I told you that generating too much chakra to the soles of your feet would just make you shoot off like a rocket?"

"Not in quite those words," Sasuke said dryly.

He ignored him.

"Well if you were to do that with your hand, everything would just avoid it, like any surface. Right? So what you're essentially doing is creating an invisible force field. Some of you may have heard of water walking-" Sasuke and Sakura nodded while Naruto squawked "Wait, what? Water walking? We can walk on water-" his teammates both hit him up his head and he stopped talking, thought with a significantly sullen look, "and how channeling chakra to the soles of your feet continuously will help stick to the surface of liquid."

He extracted his hand from the fire. It was slightly warmer than the rest of him, but pleasantly so.

"Well if you weren't continuously channeling it, and instead just tree walking, then you would fall through, become shocked by the sudden fall, and lose concentration entirely. But if you were to, say, channel chakra not just to the soles of your feet or the palms of your hands, but to your entire body, then you would still not be able to walk on water if you weren't continuously reapplying it like you do when you water walk.

"But," he said, raising his finger, his students eyes glued to it like he was about to do something unexpected, "if you made sure not to lose concentration then you would not become wet. You would fall through the surface but the entire way to the bottom the water would avoid you, allowing an air pocket to follow your descent."

Back in the fire the finger went.

"That is what I am doing to my hand. The fire does not hurt because it is not actually touching my hand. If I were to stick my hand in a lake right now, it would not get wet."

He looked at his students.

"Do you understand?"

His students looked back at him.

"Show off," Naruto declared, pointing a finger accusingly at him.

Sakura was the first one able to stick her hand fully into the fire safely, of course.

This entire chapter is basically just a retaliation to a review I got for my Hound chapter. Also, was I the only one who, when at first seeing the water walking episode, went "Oh my God, Jesus Christ was a ninja."? Please say I wasn't.