The moment Sensei decides she's on his 'priority list', she drops what she's doing and flickers to his side, leaving a bewildered Genma to finish assembling his bentō.
She does not mask her chakra by matching it to the droning hum of everything else around her. Sensei already warned her he would not hesitate to gut her if she startled him.
She appears at his side, and he pats her on the head. She makes a token effort to resist.
"This, I could get used to. No more wasting time tracking you down Sage knows where, doing Sage knows what."
Sensei is in an inexplicably good mood. Honōka muddles through the flavor of it.
She's not sure why, but long-term goals and the way people feel about them are harder for her to decipher, leaving her with only a general feeling to puzzle over. What she knows is that Sensei is planning something, and it's putting him in a really good mood.
She wonders if she should be concerned.
"I have booked out the Third Training Ground from nine hundred to fifteen hundred every weekday from now until September."
She frowns. There go most of her plans with Rin and Obito. Oh well. They can make new ones.
"More self-study, Sensei?"
"Oh, no; Minato and his student will be helping us out with some special training."
"Us?" and special training?
"Indeed. I have somewhat cleared my schedule."
Oh! There was nothing for her to be concerned about at all! This is fantastic news!—the best news she's had in forever.
Her sensei chuckles at her excited little outburst. She only jumped around a bit.
"I wouldn't get too excited just yet, Honōka-kun. Minato and his student tell me you played a prank on them in rather poor taste the other day. Getting them to agree might require some convincing."
"I'll apologize to them. It really wasn't that bad, but I'll apologize to them."
There's a gleeful tilt to Sensei's smirk, and she has a sinking feeling she's missing something.
"Minato and his student have something in mind already. It's called payback."
She frowns. Payback? How are they supposed to do that if they can't sneak up on her or find her when she doesn't want to be found?
"I would start running if I were you, Honōka-kun."
She doesn't get it. He sounds so sure Minato and Kakashi are planning some kind of punishment for her, but they couldn't—oh crap!
She can't sense either of them! She darts for cover just as Kakashi dives, one foot extended. He lands where she was standing, kicking up a cloud of road dust.
"You warned her," he accuses.
"I did not say I would not." Sensei retorts, non-smiling.
Minato lands next to Kakashi, his eyes looking strange. There are orange markings and the pupils dilate horizontally like a goat's… like a toad's! Minato is using his sensor ability!
"She's over there, Kakashi, in the bushes."
Honōka throws herself into a shunshin, covers a few hundred meters, and then matches her chakra to the ambient frequency. She creeps away, as fast as she dares, and keeps to the shadows.
The real drawback to the Nidaime Hokage's Shōkyo jutsu is that she can't mold chakra or use any jutsu without giving herself away. Yet. She's working on it, like how she figured out how to sense other frequencies even while masking her own, but it's harder than she expected.
Honōka wipes her forehead. She can't sense them. They can't sense her. They want payback for a prank she committed, and she doesn't feel like finding out what their idea of payback entails. Probably something embarrassing.
The bushes rattle and she throws herself into another shunshin, travels another couple hundred meters, matches frequencies again, and runs.
Right. They can't sense each other, but they can still track each other. And Kakashi comes from a clan of skilled trackers. He may be the only one left, but that doesn't mean he isn't fully capable of taking up the Hatake name.
She wipes her forehead again. This is… kind of exciting!
It's less exciting after an hour of running around in the noonday heat of July. She does her best to pant silently and keep moving, avoiding bumping into any tree branches or spider webs that could give away her movements.
She's tried every evasion tactic in the book. Nothing works for long. Some things don't work at all. Doubling back almost got her caught. Thankfully, Minato is just assisting Kakashi and not actually chasing. He would have caught her before the game even started, had that not been the case.
It doesn't feel much like a game anymore. She's tired and sweaty and thirsty and hungry and she's somehow gotten sunburned in the shade. Her socks have failed her; there are blisters on her feet!
Honōka wipes her forehead. She smells.
She stops and groans. Scent tracking? Really?
She focuses on transforming, becoming a common bobtailed cat between one breath and the next, and scatters her chakra frequency again. She was worried for a moment that she wouldn't be able to while in a henge, but the amount of chakra she needs to maintain the henge once transformed is so minuscule that it contributes almost nothing to the area's ambiance.
Her henge model's name is Madara—or she calls him Madara. He has a couple of orange and brown spots but is mostly white. He's a stray cat she and her friends feed, and it absolutely drives Obito insane when she calls him Madara.
Honōka likes Madara. He's a bit stupid and sometimes clumsy, but he has a charming face and takes care of the other stray kittens in Uchiha-ku. A very good boy. And he has a very obvious tomcat scent.
Honōka, as Madara, doubles back. She wants to figure out how Kakashi is tracking her, for future reference.
She's downwind of them, so she smells them before she hears them and hears them before she sees them. Honōka hunkers down and waits for them to appear.
"Kakashi, it's too hot for this," a young voice whimpers.
Her ears perk up and her whiskers twitch. Dog. Talking dog. Huh.
Kakashi passes by her, carrying a juvenile pug wearing a hitai-ate and a paper tag of some sort. She can't sense the dog either. She creeps alongside them, staying just out of range of the pesky pug's nose. It's a cute nose, squashed and wrinkly and so cute, but still pesky.
The pug whines, and her back arches, ready to spring away. But he just complains about the heat again. Kakashi pats him sympathetically.
"Just a little longer, Pakkun. Honōka must be tired by now."
Minato flickers back to his student.
"Is she still in the area, Minato-sensei?" Kakashi sounds hopeful. He doesn't want to be running around in this heat anymore than Honōka or his pug friend Pakkun does.
"I think so. Hopefully Pakkun will pick up the trail. It seemed like Honōka-chan was building up chakra for a shunshin again, but I didn't sense her actually leaving the area. Maybe it was a feint?"
Honōka as Madara turns and runs, belly to the ground. The Third training Ground is nearby and Sensei is there waiting. He's not waiting specifically for her, though, so he probably thought she wouldn't be able to avoid Minato and Kakashi's payback.
A wicked thought strikes her.
She strolls onto the Third Training Ground, imitating Madara's perky gait.
Sensei is sitting on the central wooden post, one leg crossed over the other. The sun beats down on his paper white skin but he neither sweats nor burns. She wonders what his trick is—it doesn't smell like he's wearing sun lotion.
He's reading a journal, and she doesn't want to startle him and get something pointy thrown at her, so she meows.
He doesn't even look up.
"You are not fooling me, Honōka-kun."
She trills at him, trying to convey how unimpressed she is with him for ruining her fun—she had a plan!—and takes a running leap at the pillar to his left.
"What gave me away?" she asks, projecting her voice with the barest amount of chakra possible. She wonders how long it will take Minato to notice.
Sensei snaps his journal shut.
"Even small animals have detectable levels of chakra. If you wish to become a truly competent transformation artist, you must be able to mimic the signatures of other people and creatures." His lip twitches; he's still impressed with her. "Being able to make your presence disappear is only half the battle."
She grooms her face as Kakashi and Minato appear out of a shunshin. The pug is gone. She wanted to pet him.
"She's not here either, Minato-sensei." Kakashi gripes.
Minato takes a quick look around, zeroing in on her, a cat with no presence. His eyes return to normal, blue replacing yellow in a fraction of a second.
"Oh, she's here, Kakashi."
Kakashi looks around again, just a little wild-eyed. He stops on her cat form.
"Ah!" he swears. Honōka thinks it might be the first time she's ever heard him swear. "Honōka can change her scent when she transforms. No wonder Pakkun lost the trail…"
She jumps off the wooden post, reverting mid jump—yet another thing she taught herself at the expense of many scrapes and bruises, and sticks the landing, bowing.
"Please forgive me for setting you guys up. It wasn't nice of me to leave you to Hokage-sama's wrath."
After a moment of silence, Kakashi blows out an enormous sigh and Minato smiles. She can't tell what they're feeling thanks to whatever method they've used to erase their presence.
"Maa… he wasn't that upset. Right, Minato-sensei?"